


Si Vis Pacem

by EverythingNarrative



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Altpower, Gen, Slice of Life, and at some point in the distant past Prototype, bait and switch fix-fic, discussed sex, gratuitous gruesomeness and malice, implied sex, with apologies to The Fall of Doc Future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-06-09 14:28:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 133
Words: 130,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6910987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverythingNarrative/pseuds/EverythingNarrative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A misplaced coat hook, a fractured temple, and a burgeoning brain infection leads Taylor to trigger with a vastly different power.</p><p>One that, among other things, allows her to change the very structure of her brain.</p><p>Armed with her superhuman intellect and only slightly superhuman physique, she takes on Brockton Bay and the World.</p><p>The World (after a brief period of warmup) fights back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. α

**Author's Note:**

For all the cape geek I had been, the specifics of how one became a cape had never really interested me. The literature had been quite impenetrable — especially to a fifteen year old Poindexter.

If I had taken the time to actually read up on what constituted a trigger event, it wouldn’t have done me any good anyway. It was the parachuting-malfunction paradox: if your parachute malfunctions you have enough time to calculate exactly how long you have left before you hit the ground and die horrifically — the mental arithmetic isn’t very hard. But for all the quantified knowledge of your impending doom, it is as much a death sentence for your as for a retarded gorilla.

Trapped in a cramped space surrounded by biological waste, with a searing pain in my temple — I’d hit my head against something. I had screamed myself hoarse, I had bawled my eyes out, I had kicked the locker door so hard I was certain I’d broken a toe, I had begged for help, I had thrown up until I was dry heaving, then dry heaved until I’d run out of dry.

Just before I passed out, I might even have come to terms with my fate; covered in filth and insects and with a negative of a coat-hook in my temple.

* * *

Coma dreams were supposedly freaky. I’d be inclined to agree.

There was a foreign contaminant in my brain. That was the first thing I came to understand as soon as I could understand anything. Immune response was already on the rise, and within short oder I’d be dead from meningitis.

That wouldn’t do, so the bacteria were torn apart, the toxins were neutralized, and the swelling quelled. Another concern nearby was the fact that my cerebrospinal integrity was compromised — that was trickier to fix, but flesh could be mended and bone repositioned. No brain damage, which was good.

Other problems sprung to mind — my broken toe, misaligned; without intervention it would heal wrong, so it was set right.

Numerous small cuts all around my body were infected as well, but the contaminations suffered much the same fate as everything else.

The physical exhaustion I was suffering from was trickier to fix, but a steady stream of glucose rich saline was entering that one vein in my arm they used for that sort of thing. In an hour I’d be back to normal energy levels — but on the other hand there was a good chance I’d need the alertness as soon as possible.

Hence, I started my ketone cycle — burning fat stores and activating ancient precautions allowing the mind to function clearly during famine.

Mental exhaustion was also a problem, due to buildups of various toxicities and chemical imbalances. Offending molecules were torn apart, reduced to water, carbon dioxide, and salts.

The last priority fix was to ensure I’d be able to navigate sufficiently. Myopia was misshapen eyes, so my eyeballs readjusted themselves.

The last thing I needed was wakefulness, so my adrenal glands discharged their contents into my bloodstream, while I catalogued every minor problem for later fixing when I had more time.

* * *

Then I woke up, but not from the coma dream. The sensory over-stimulus hit with force; a deluge of information overwhelmed me. I felt a mounting migraine — which vanished the instant I put a word to it.

I could still hardly think — skin, bone, muscle, glands, nerves, tendons, liver, kidney, intestine, spleen, brain — organs made of cells made of organelles made of complex molecules — a neuron impulse pattern piloting a slab of meat. Thirty trillion cells.

And yet as soon as I thought the thought to end, I could think again. As crisp as on any other day.

I’d never even gotten around to opening my eyes — first thing to remedy. The room around me was a regular hospital room with baby-blue walls. I was dressed in a hospital gown, and a dividing curtain was pulled aside, showing the other bed empty.

Shakily I sat up and swung my legs out of bed. Every movement I sensed twofold — once through proprioception, and once broken down into individual muscle fibre contractions. Ever the practical mind, I staggered into the bathroom, only remembering the IV stand when I felt a tug on the line in my arm.

* * *

The sound of flushing must have alerted a nurse. It took precisely two minutes before my attending physician was in my room and asking questions. Where I thought I was, what time I thought it was, who I thought I was. While she asked me, she checked my pupillary response — normal; my respiration — normal; my temperature — normal. She asked me if I had stiffness in my neck. I didn’t.

Then a nurse came to change the bandage on my temple.

I heard Dad down the hall — shouting in fury. He didn’t get angry often; in truth, I had only seen it happen twice. But I knew just how deep his rage ran. A dozen seconds later, he came in.

Tall and lanky like me, balding, bespectacled, and red in the face. He was worried sick, understandably. We talked for a while, but I wasn’t terribly coherent.

* * *

They kept me overnight for observation. Then I got to stay in the psychiatric ward. It gave me time to adjust, if nothing else. Anti-anxiety medications were welcome, and I easily moderated the side-effects — somehow.

The delusion was too persistent: ever present, even in sleep. Too well-calibrated to my other senses. As the days went by, I became more and more convinced that I did in fact have a superpower of some description. Superpowers existed, and I knew comparatively more about them than the average person.

The damning blow came when on the last day of my stay produced a freckle on my shoulder simply by thinking it. I had never had freckles, ever.

Dad came to pick me up, and I didn’t say a word for the whole ride home. He told me the school was willing to settle out of court and pay my hospital bills, so at least we didn’t have to worry about that.


	2. β

A handle on a door affords pulling, a flat plate on a door affords pushing, and a new superpower affords exploration. I didn’t even need a remote area free from the prying eyes of — well, anyone — in order to practice. Just a bit of privacy.

I got another week off from school.

If anyone asked I was ‘meditating.’ The only incongruity was that I did so with a notebook by my side, and made frequent trips to the library to loan books: anatomy, medicine, biochemistry, psychiatry.

My power was the opposite of flashy. By all accounts I had gotten a lousy deal — even if it had saved my life by letting me destroy diseases within myself with a thought.

Going by the terminology of the academia, it was a form of biological control. That alone would have put me in the same category as a few notable, horrible villains: Bonesaw, Nilbog…

The one upside was that it was restricted to the interior of my own body. It was also slow as molasses. Sure, I could heal bruises and scrapes extremely fast — in dozens of minutes rather than days. One day when Dad wasn’t home, I’d made a rather deep incision, and found myself able to knit the wound together in three hours.

A consciously directed healing factor, in other words, and complete bodily self-awareness. In a world where a Neo-Nazi could level a building with a wave of her hand. Nice.

* * *

Concluding that my power was bunk wasn’t enough to deter me. If nothing else, I could be a small time hero, helping out behind the front lines. I was if nothing else, comparatively less likely to be incapacitated.

So I did the obvious thing, and started running. If I was gonna run supplies to cape battles, I’d have to be in good shape. The only problem was that Dad and I didn’t exactly live in a good part of town — I insisted, so Dad brought me a pepper spray.

I tested it on myself, and discovered another small upshot — I was immune to pain. I could simply block it out. The rather unwise decision to spray capsaicin concentrate in my own face, came out of a desire to know for sure that it would disable an assailant.

* * *

Three days after concluding that my power was bunk, I was forced to revise my initial verdict. I was in terrible shape, and straining myself for the first time since my quote-unquote upgrade; and it gave me an opportunity to observe my body reacting to it.

Regenerating a little stronger each time. Key word here: regenerating. Microfractures in my bones, microscopic tears in muscle fibers and tendons, stress in the cardiovascular system.

It took me ten minutes to figure out how to turn that on and not having it turn off again. I’d keep running to keep up appearances, and add in a strength training regiment, but by the end of the following week I would be approaching prodigious child athlete levels. By the end of the month, I’d be able to participate in the Olympics.

Maybe I wasn’t destined to stay off the front lines after all.

* * *

My skin wasn’t the fairest in all the land, but one morning I looked in the mirror and decided to do something about that. Dark circles around my eyes disappeared, imperfections and discolorations cleared up, unfortunately placed moles dissolved. My dandruff plain fell off when I washed my hair.

On a more… Vain impulse, I shed all my dark body hair, replacing it with light wispy hairs. And a few weeks later, following this train of thought, I would decide that periods just wasn’t for me. The amount I saved on feminine hygiene articles alone was incredible.

In truth, I had always settled for being second-rate in terms of beauty; but now I didn’t have to. If I could grow muscles and bones, I could grow curves.

None of it would come cheap in terms of calories. I was going to have a tremendous appetite.

* * *

On Saturday — I’d be going back to school on Monday — I felt a mounting dread. All in all, getting shoved in the locker essentially constituted attempted murder. Even without getting a coat hook through my skull, I could easily imagine being left in there overnight.

I didn’t get much sleep.

Which was fortunate, because it let me observe the effects of sleep deprivation. The feeling of tiredness was a proxy for a buildup of toxins in the brain. In the early morning I dared sleep a full sleep cycle — one hundred minutes — and kept my strange awareness through it.

It was almost like having two minds.

True enough, sleep cleared out the toxic buildup, but through purely mechanical means: wakefulness induced a gentle swelling of the cerebral cortex, preventing the cerebrospinal fluid from adequately washing away the toxins. Reducing the swelling did dull my thoughts a bit — a regrettable downside.

Now, I found my mind wandering into a whole new realm of possibility: brain modifications.


	3. γ

Resolving to exercise all caution, I turned my attention to my brain.

The first and most important step came when I awoke on Monday: apprehension, fear, anxiety, psychosomatic nausea… With a dissociating decidedness, I both experienced these, and at the same time calmly observed their effect on my neurology.

Chemicals shifting, neural impulses twirling and propagating like fractal sound waves. My power supplied a lot of context, and proposed a lot of solutions.

For starters, I began managing my neurotransmitter balances — the easiest way to get a grip on myself. At once, calmness descended over me, and I was free to go through my routines.

* * *

At school, I met my would-be-bane with head held high. Emma and Sophia — my former best friend and her muscle-slash-corrupter. One August I had come back to school to find her my enemy.

For a year and a half they had made my life hell, and now the tables had turned so thoroughly it wasn’t even funny. Nothing they did could ever faze me again if I did not wish it to, and it would only get better if I was right about where to go next.

One was often told to ‘just ignore’ bullies. In my case, that might actually work. Now the only thing I had to fear was damage that could be tallied in dollars and cents — Dad and I weren’t rich.

* * *

Being out and about, I kept myself under thorough observation and I as my collected data grew each day, I started noticing the incredible inefficiencies in the human body. Metabolic processes running in standby-mode, in preparation of the next famine that never came, shortcuts that saved resources during foetal development but were detrimental in adulthood, evolutionary leftovers that did nothing but get in the way.

Every night I put myself through elective surgery to remedy all of this — myelinating my peripheral nerves, changing pathways of blood, lymph and neuron to be more direct, rewiring my retinas to get rid of the bind spot and the blood vessels that obscured it.

I edged into thoroughly superhuman.

Increasing the energy storage capacity of my tissues was trickier, but I already had the mother of all peak oxygen uptakes, so it was really only a question of growing my liver and altering the cell distributions within it.

Careful observation of my own movement — helpfully enabled by my power’s ability to gauge forces and stresses and convert it into information I understood; really it did that for everything — led me to develop perfect fluid, graceful movements. As the bone density of my knuckles grew in, I was able to punch a two-by-four hard enough to break it.

But all of that paled compared to one crucial ability I discovered: I was able to do chemical synthesis within myself. Breaking lactic acid down and reconstituting it into glucose could let me operate at peak anaerobe capacity until my muscles would be burning unbearable if not for my ability to lock out the pain; then spend thirty seconds to a minute recovering.

Even more, I could stitch adenosine and phosphate ions back together for a boost — or lightening the load on my metabolism in general.

Superhuman stamina and reflexes, coupled with peak athletic capability. It was a nice side project while I worked on the main show. Hiding the outward changes to my body wasn’t even difficult — I’d long since taken to wearing baggy clothes because of the bullying.

* * *

The ‘main show’ was the thorough rewiring of my mental architecture. I could have written books about it by the time April rolled around.

Not being constantly depressed and anxious had helped my grades a little, but in March, I received straight A’s all across the board. With observation, I learned the pathways of my mind, and set out to understand them, then rewire or reinforce them as I saw fit. When I was done with the first stage, IQ tests ceased applying to me. Then I went through three more.

I suffered no delusions of grandeur. Out there in the world there were mind-controllers, emotion-controllers, memory-editors, body-controllers, superb liars, counter-deception experts, and power nullifiers. Any of those would present tremendous trouble for me, and the latter necessitated that I was in full control of my body without my power; the former necessitated strong safety and secrecy.

My reading list turned to cryptography, and my power flourished in this new domain.

Memories would upon recall be re-experienced and re-contextualized — meaning my memory was rife with corruption. Inspired by error correcting codes, I revamped the whole thing to a much more sensible and less curmudgeon architecture. Inconsistencies would spring out with startling force.

Emotions were chemical in nature, so I added glandular systems to better regulate them, wiring it up with systems preventing feedback loops, and tied it together with hard overrides accessible through various emergency states. By the end of it I could secrete almost any kind of psychoactive compound with a thought. The repercussions subtly restructured my entire metabolism.

Subconscious sensory filters got an overhaul, re-prioritizing every decision algorithm for what got ignored and what got brought to conscious attention. Within a day, I was a veritable Sherlock Holmes.

Over the course of a spare week, I went through a textbook of cognitive biases and identified all the ones that held true, and all the ones that were wrong, weren’t entirely so. With methodical ease, I went about restructuring my higher reason to yield accurate conclusions. Going further, I read up on probability theory and combed through my handiwork to make the uncertainties obey the applicable mathematical law to the extent it was possible.

Equally important to all of this was my ethics. Sequestered away as a distribution of many forms of cognition, I set about centralizing it better, but keeping it redundantly self-correcting. I instilled in myself a strong sense of humility to be ever present — not to second guess myself, but to keep myself from prideful stupidity. I mattered, my friends — if I ever came to have any — mattered, but in the end, I guess humanity mattered most. If it came down to it, I would sacrifice myself for the greater good.

But then again, I did not fall into the trap of implementing impossible-to-circumvent rules. I’d read enough sci-fi stories about robots with those malfunctioning to know it was a bad idea.

The last bit was the seat of my power — two lumps of neurons, one grown out of the other, acting as a second corpus callosum. Looking inside it almost made me dizzy; I could see neurons firing from nowhere, but in response to my thinking about observing them— like knowing that you know that you know that you know ad infinitum. Whatever created my power, it could make my neurons fire at will. Perhaps there was no way to work around that, but I still streamlined the interface to the rest of my mind, adding the possibility of quarantining the whole thing.

* * *

Building upon this much more sensible mind design was much easier, and let me gain complete autonomic control — by the end of Feburary, my entire body could be controlled without my power.

This also enabled complete control of my microexpressions, vocal stress, and body language; in essence turning me into a perfect liar. My poker face was literally perfect; I had no tells.

Complete control over my social signals down to my body odor coupled nicely with my ability to percieve the body language, microexpressions, and vocal stress of others. In turning myself superintelligent, I had also become socially superintelligent; barring superpowers conveying unfair advantage I was the best manipulator on the planet.

* * *

It occured to me on the last day of March, just as I was finishing my four stage of mental changes — mostly a speed boost — that I was having way too much fun.

For three months, I had done nothing but make myself better, and yet I was stuck in the status quo.

My relationship with Dad hadn’t improved; I was still, nominally, the subject of a bullying campaign; and I hadn’t begun my superhero career at all. That was going to change now.


	4. I

The first part of my plan would be to rid the world of the tyranny of Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and perhaps the second-tier Madison Clements.

Easiest to take out would be Hess: she was aggressive and short sighted, came from a broken home, and had a toxic Darwinist ideology that was a fitting counter and foil to Neo-Nazism.

She had feelings of inferiority, and used aggression to compensate. Her greatest joy was stepping on the weak and running track. Despicable and deserving of pity at the same time; a sociopath from trauma.

More worrying was that the faculty seemed to turn a blind eye to her escapades and more-or-less overt violence. Aside from shoves and shoulder-checks, she had a habit of making credible threats and following through with them if the rumours were to be believed.

So my strategy was fairly simple: I was going to get her to attack me, and get her arrested for assault and battery on undeniable proof.

It started on the first of April, when I slipped a note into her pocket when she shoulder checked me — sleight of hand was another thing I had mastered when I had a spare few hours in March.

> I know what you did to Hebert.  
> You deserve the way he treated you.  
> Count your days of freedom.

It was a classic gas-lighting technique: vagueness. It was a good bet it was a male role model that had abused her; I had followed her home the day before and seen her mother take care of Sophia’s younger siblings — she wasn’t the abusive type.

The note put her on edge, plain to see in her face. Predictably she reacted by shoulder checking me in the hallway when the bell rang, and I took the opportunity to trip her. She sprawled on the floor, and I snickered audibly on purpose.

Already heads were turning, and Sophia to her credit got up quickly, turning to me with venom in her eyes.

“You think that’s funny, Hebert?” she hissed.

“A little, yeah. You bump into me and fall over — karma, much?” It was completely uncharacteristic of me to back chat like this, and I saw the fury in her eyes. At the same time, a quick glance aside told me that a teacher was in the crowd. Sophia hadn’t. “What are you gonna do?” I asked loud. “Kill me? You tried that once, failed that too. I suppose if we got in a fight, you’d botch that too.”

She tackled me to the floor and we grappled for a few short seconds — hair pulling, scratching and half-punches, with me deliberately holding back — before the teacher intervened. He was a middle aged mountain of a man, and pulled Sophia off me by her arm, letting me get up.

“What the hell was this about?” he said firmly. “Fighting in the hallways? You’re the track team champion, aren’t you?” he said to Hess. “Act like it.”

“Nigger can’t take a taunt,” I muttered under my breath.

He turned to face me. “Racial slurs are off limits, Ms…”

“Hebert,” I supplied.

“Detention to both of you —” he consulted his smart phone “— Friday.”

Exactly the result I wanted. Bullshit ideas of fairness would entail us getting equal blame; that was the way bullying proliferated: the idea that standing up for yourself made you just as bad. Bullying was a problem for the faculty; it prompted taking sides, and any punishment would have to be defended against the wrath of parents who thought their little angels could do no wrong.

The politically safe thing to do was to ignore emotional and psychological abuse, make token efforts to investigate, and punish both victim and bully when worst came to worst.

If the victim did tattle, they were faced with he-said-she-said mentality, especially against bullies with powerful parents — like say Emma Barnes with her lawyer father Alan — and standards of proof that were unreasonable for bullied teens. In the unlikely case that bullies got punished, the punishment was a slap on the wrist, and the victim was labeled as a snitch.

Catch 22: the high school edition.

Explaining this to Dad was going to be fun.

* * *

The idiocy of the upper faculty knew no bounds. Sophia and I were sat together in an empty classroom, with the oversight of a teacher.

I’d come prepared.

Epinephrine could be aerosolized, and upon inhalation it would enter the bloodstream with all the effects that carried with it — adrenaline surge on demand. I’d built reservoirs in my lungs for this exact purpose, allowing me to exhale a steady stream of it.

The teacher they had assigned to us was young, a little on the handsome side, and chronically overworked as they all were. Somewhere in the three hours we were supposed to sit here and do homework, he would take a coffee break, or a bathroom break.

I sat in silence, two tables over from Sophia, and waited for the inevitable interruption in our surveillance. I knew Sophia well enough to know she would jeer me as soon as he left, and I knew she knew I wouldn’t dare tell him she had done so. Sophia thought she had me profiled, and wasn’t good enough at reacting on inconsistencies to notice that she hadn’t going by my actions that got us into this.

The teacher got up and brought his coffee cup. It was two minutes walk to the break room, giving me a handy five minutes to make my move.

“Hebert, you’re gonna wish you had died in that locker when I’m done with you.”

I glanced up from the book I was reading, and over at Sophia, and let my body language and face signal a touch of fear. “Fuck off Sophia,” I said.

“Nah, see, after we’re done here, I’ll call Emma and start making plans. If you thought the locker was bad…” she continued.

“Shut up, we’re not supposed to talk,” I muttered.

She got up, and under the guise of hyperventilating, I started saturating the air around me with pure adrenaline. She stepped into the cloud of invisible, orderless trap. “Gosh, you have such a punchable face.”

I tentatively glanced at her, and gauged her pulse from the barely visible throb of her jugular. “I wouldn’t know,” I said.

“You’re weak, Hebert. You don’t deserve to live.”

“Maybe not,” I muttered after a little. Another glance told me her pulse had risen noticeably. “But killing me would make you a murderer,” I said.

“Which is why you’re gonna kill yourself,” she said. “You’ll want to, when I’m done with you.”

I looked up at her in earnest. She was starting to sweat, and I caught a nervous tic in her eye. “What’s the matter, Hess, you don’t look so hot? Is taunting me too much for you to handle? I thought you were a big bad predator.”

“Wh–” she said. “Fuck off, do you want me to kick your ass?” She was getting angry now.

“Why don’t you try for real this time?” I quipped.

“And get my ass busted when he comes back?” She pointed at the door over her shoulder with a thumb. “Do you take me for a fucking moron?”

“Coward,” I muttered. “No that doesn’t suit you… Prey.”

That was all it took. With a scream of rage she attacked, yanking me off my chair. While I was down she kicked me in the side, and I obligingly curled up in pretend pain. Then she sat herself on top of me and I saw the sadistic glint in her eye before she started punching me in the face.

I did nothing to stop her as she hammered away on my face — my nose and cheekbone fractured, my lip and eyebrow split open, and my teeth were shaken loose. Punch after punch after punch, I could only imagine what her knuckles were going to look like.

My head was lolling back like a dead fish when the teacher walked through the door. He dropped his coffee cup, and it shattered on the floor. I felt bad for the hit his career was about to take.

“Call the police,” I sputtered though the blood in my mouth.

* * *

Sophia in handcuffs. It was a small dream come true.

The young teacher had called the police before going to the principal; and despite it all, there was no covering up the fact that I was spitting teeth and Sophia’s knuckles were busted beyond compare. Racism perhaps worked in my favor, as the cops took one look at a black girl beating up a white girl and drew their conclusions. No amount of explaining from Principal Blackwell could hide that this was a clear cut case.

Me, Sophia, two cops, Blackwell, and the young teacher.

“Well, I did sort of maybe kind of back chat a little,” I muttered through a split lip. The young teacher — Jeff — A helpful soul had fetched me a first-aid kit and I had declined his help in cleaning my wounds. “The rest is pretty evident,” I added and gestured to my face.

“So in other words, you asked for it,” Blackwell said.

I shot her a glare. “Yes, because it is one’s right to brutally attack anyone who insults you. As ratified by constitutional amendment… Oh wait, no, it’s not.” I looked to the cops. “Back me up here.”

“Sarcasm aside,” one of the officers said, “this is assault and battery, plain as day.”

I looked at Sophia. She had a sort of mortified look on her face. I’d have take glee in it, but I couldn’t allow myself. She didn’t deserve to be a fucked up sociopath, and now she was probably going to Juvie Hall. From what I understood prison was not fun.

“I’m gonna need some stitches… Blackwell, I trust we can make a deal about the school footing my medical bills again?”

She glared at me.

“Again?” one of the cops asked.

“In January — first day after the holidays — I was shoved in a locker,” I said in a monotone, keeping eye-contact with Blackwell, “which had been filled with used pads and tampons before the holidays began. I was in there for three hours and only narrowly managed not to contract fatal meningitis from cracking my temple open on a coat hook inside.”

Both of the cops were men, about middle aged, and both of them white. One was a little heavy set. Their eyes widened in surprise.

“I can’t prove it myself, but I am fairly sure Sophia is the culprit. There’s at least a dozen witnesses who haven’t come forth — the janitor who cleaned up can attest to the mess, my attending physician can attest to me being lucky I didn’t catch a fatal infection.

“That, by the way was the pinnacle of a year long bullying campaign perpetrated by Ms. Hess and her friends Emma Barnes and Madison Clements,” I finished.

The two cops looked at one another. “We’ll be sure to investigate. If it’s true, that’s attempted murder,” one of them said. “That’s what— ten years if the DA makes it stick?”

Sophia said nothing, but her posture said everything — defeat. I stood, and looked at one of the cops. I’d been observing their body language, and one of them was a little more sympathetic towards my plight than the other. “Can I talk to you outside for a second?”

He nodded, I got up, and we stepped outside.

“What do you need?” he said.

“My advice, if you can give it to the prosecutor?” I said in a hushed voice. “Don’t go after Barnes. If she gets involved, her father will defend her and Hess. He’s a skilled lawyer, and I bet he can make it very hard to make the charges stick. I’m willing to press charges against Hess, given what she did to me, but… Emma Barnes is an old friend… I’m still kind of hoping she might come around.”

The cop gave me a skeptical look.

“Look at it this way,” I added, and cued my own body language to his. “It’s less work for you — finding anything on Emma is going to be hard; she’s a smart, popular girl. She gets other people to do her dirty bullying work — like Hess. The less she knows, the less her father can throw a spanner in the legal works and make it so Hess doesn’t see justice.”

He gave a grunt. “You’re a really bright kid,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks,” I said.

* * *

When out parents arrived, the cops went over the situation as they understood it. Sophia’s mother looked mildly horrified, but took a cue from her daughter.

Dad silently fumed for most of it, and asked a few pointed questions — mostly about the kind of charges Sophia was facing.

We left in an orderly manner, and headed for the emergency room.

“So, what really happened?” he asked me.

“I got detention on purpose, to get in a one-on-one situation with Sophia,” I said. “Then I taunted her into kicking the shit out of me in order to get her arrested. She’s one of the bullies. If I’m lucky, she’s going to spend a decade behind bars. Fair trade for a broken nose, and a split lip and brow.”

Dad remained silent. We’d spoken very little since January, and our relationship had deteriorated.

“Who else?” he asked.

“Emma,” I said. “Barnes. I told the cops not to involve her, lest her father does his lawyer thing…”

I could read the anger in his face. “Alan, that asshole,” he growled.

“I know you’re not stupid, and I’m sorry for keeping things from you,” I said. “There’s another thing I haven’t told you— I have superpowers.” A shocking fact to divert his attention. “I’m a parahuman.

“Since the… The locker,” I added to answer his unasked question.

We reached a red light and Dad looked over at me. I looked at him, and felt very vulnerable. It was stupid: hanging on to a secret like that, but it needed to be said. He deserved to know.

“I heal, I’m strong, I’m fast, I’m smart, I don’t feel pain. I’ll be fine by tomorrow, but I’d like some more time off from school.”

He nodded. “Is that why your grades improved?”

“Yeah. And it’s why I’m… I’m getting prettier, I suppose.”

Mom had been slender and lanky just like Dad. I’d been skinny and knobbly with a little bit of a potbelly — now I was a curvy athlete.

We drove in silence for a while.

“Are you going to be OK?” he asked me.

“Yeah… Yeah— I think I’m gonna be more than OK. Sorry for keeping secrets.”

We drove to the ER, and I didn’t object. I wanted to bill Blackwell out of spite.


	5. II

We talked all of Saturday, Dad and I. In truth, I’d missed talking to him.

About small things, mostly. The weather, politics, how the union was doing, funny things that had happened in school; big things too. I obligingly showed off some of the things I could do: handstand push-ups, juggling, magic tricks. Dad found an old dart board in the loft and I put three darts in the treble ring of the 20-point slice — maximum possible score.

I had practiced throwing things, and my power supplied nigh-perfect proprioception, in addition to my thoroughly superhuman dexterity.

“So, are you going to join the Wards?” Dad asked.

This was a big question. I hadn’t quite done as much research as I wanted to in that area. Sure, I knew a good amount about what the Protectorate and the Wards were, and what they did, but I didn’t know much about how it was to be a member.

“I need more data,” I said. “From what I can tell, it’s a good option.”

“I’d actually begun putting together a costume myself,” I said. “Maybe go out and beat up some crooks to see if it was for me.”

Dad eyed me. “Sounds dangerous.”

I smiled. “Dad, it’s not like I’d go into a fight I wasn’t sure I could win, and I could probably talk my way out of anything. If all else fails, I can outrun anyone who isn’t an Olympic athlete.”

He nodded. “Still. I’d say you shouldn’t.”

* * *

I cajoled Dad into the basement to show off my handiwork. Through a mixture of incredible bargaining skill and excessive paranoia I had managed to put together a quite respectable base outfit, from various military surplus stores.

For basic protection, I had a flak jacket, a protective face mask, a skater helmet, knee pads, and steel toed boots. Together, those accounted for two thirds of the one hundred and fifty dollars I had spent — I had been saving my allowance like a miser ever since the first time I’d lost a textbook to a prank.

The flak jacket was probably from the eighties, but adequately stab proof; the boots had a reinforced soles.

Over top the flak jacket, I was going to war a ratty, black leather jacket, and a pair of black cargo pants served as leg wear, and a pair of cheap leather gloves would protect my hands. The mask I had chosen was intended for air-soft, or something.

“It’s very… Black,” Dad remarked.

“I know. That’s deliberate — I need to be intimidating; I don’t have many options for punching above my weight class. The color signals ‘antihero,’ which translates to ‘potentially violent’ for most people.”

“Still… I’d mistake you for a villain,” Dad said.

It strung a little. I’d been over the trade-offs, and I was still certain this maximized my chances. “What do you suggest?”

Dad shrugged. “Something… Nice. A splash of color, honestly I don’t know; but that’s my two cents.”

I looked at the costume. An obvious idea would be to buy into the mojo of an existing hero — it might earn me their enmity, but it was still a fair trade for survival. Given my capabilities, and comparing them to Brockton Bay’s Protectorate roster, I quickly narrowed it down to one. Miss Militia.

“Patriotism,” I said. “Do we have spray paint?”

“Blue, red, and white?” Dad asked.

* * *

A quick job with masking tape and stencils later, and my suit looked a good bit more ridiculous.

The idea was to appear patriotic — basically, spangles. The USA was still a military superpower, and in the eyes of the rest of the world we had guns up the wazoo. We also had the Protectorate, which was the single greatest hero organization in the world.

My helmet and my mask got a coat of dark blue, one of my knee protectors got a star, as did the corresponding boot. No need to put a star on my torso and give the bad guys something to aim for.

I had a red scarf lying around, and stripes… Stripes would serve a function. Another small thing, putting the odds in my favor. The existence of optical illusions was a thing I could exploit — I’d become immune when I rewired my entire sensorium, but that didn’t apply to literally everyone else.

Particularly, stripes perpendicular to an objects length made most people misjudge the length. This was exploitable in close quarter combat, where I’d have to be the first to land a hit in order to stand a chance. Hence, I painted the stripes on the sleeves, which would obscure my reach.

Also, I did the same to what was going to become my primary weapons: two batons made from steel pipe. Heavy and hard, coated in black lacquer, two feet long apiece. I’d scavenged it from the sprinkler system of an abandoned hotel building. They too got stripes.

When I was done, the paint fumes hang heavy in the basement, but Dad endured to see my handiwork.

“Yeah, that’s a lot better,” he said. “What do you have other than those two—” he gestured to the batons.

The pipes and outfit weren’t the only thing I had planned to bring into the field; I had in fact spend a long afternoon doing nothing but brainstorming and refining a list of items to bring — parts of it remained a wish-list, due to budget constraints.

A knife, should I need lethal force, the key-chain pepper spray Dad had given me, a dollar store first aid kit, spare change, a flashlight, and a burner phone.

Phones had been a sore point ever since Mom had… She had been driving, and a call had distracted her. But the utility of a burner phone was too great, and I had taken a deep breath, gotten over the familial aversion and purchased one.

I’d also found an instant camera in the loft one day: a fun and useful anachronism if I needed to document anything — and I found it next to a spare cartridge of film.

Some of the things I would have liked to have was a better first aid kit, a taser, and a gun.

“You’ve thought this through,” was the verdict.

“Yeah,” I said and started packing all of it back together. I’d chosen an old duffel bag to store it all in; it would double as storage for my civvies when I changed in the field. “What’s for dinner?”

“Anything you like,” he said and ruffled my hair, “My little superhero.”


	6. III

I suppose in retrospect that sunday evening was not the most opportune time to hunt for a crime in progress. Well, smart criminals would notice this was the case, and then subsequently commit crime on Sunday evenings, since fewer crime hunters would be out at this time.

So either the crime hunters realized this and as did the smart criminals, leading to one of the fun kind of I-know-that-you-know situations; or smart criminals didn’t exist.

Well, apart from say, leaders of large organizations, but those guys didn’t commit street crime, and din’t micromanage their crooks.

Clad in my costume, I jogged through the docs at a very good pace — most runners didn’t realize, but human feet were made for a toe-striking gait; the heel-striking gait was made popular by shoes, necessitated by hard pavement.

My night-vision and hearing were distrinctly above-par, although I hand’t put in the hours to make either superhuman; but I was certain I’d be able to spot something in an alleyway, even in a dead run.

My patrol tonight took me around the Docks, which was widely regarded as the third worst part of town. Once, it had been a flourishing industrial district; once as in when Dad was a young union manager.

Then came the Reagan administration and the red scare in the eighties, and today union membership was down to a tenth of the national workforce. If my analysis — barring my admittedly loose grasp of sociology — was coorect, this was one of the deciding factors in the decline of industry in the United States. Plainly, it allowed companies to outsource with impunity, or something like that.

The other deciding factor in Brockton Bay’s decline in particular was the strike that came in response to the first wave of outsourcing: blocking the north harbor with a container ship, leading to the creation of the boat graveyard. Ship owners cashed their insurance rather than solving the problem.

That killed the shipping industry. Meanwhile, white-collar tech took over the nice part of town, which now housed things like the headquarters of Medhall.

Widespread unemployment of a large blue-collar workforce led to an increase in crime, and to an environment where villains could flourish, leading to the ‘dark nineties’ where gang wars was the order of the day. More like the late nineties — capes were still too new in the early nineties.

Hell, Mom had been part of a gang. For a little while. Without comitting any crimes. I put a very small propability on that being a lie, but I hadn’t asked Dad about it since I got the ability to detect lies the way I could grammatical errors.

What all of this amounted to in present day Brockton Bay was a hellhole of an abandoned industrial district, that few politicians even dared address. Abandoned factory buildings and warehouses sat like dull boxes in between dull, boxy, abandoned apartment complexes inhabited by squatters. Those that held jobs and owned apartments here did so out of necessity or perverse love for the town.

Garbage littered the streets, graffiti littered the walls, homeless people shuffled to and fro in the day hours, sex workers looked for clients in the evening hours, and gang colors were on display with pride at all hours.

‘Gray’ and ‘dirty’ seemed like a good description of it all.

My footfalls were quiet as I ran along cracked tarmac pavements.

* * *

On my second pass of my route, varying my course a little, I saw a lighter flame down the street. So far the whole area had been abandoned, and I had spotted subtle red-and-green dragon-motif graffiti, and less subtle ‘ABB’ tags, indicating that this was gang turf.

Immediately, I ducked into an alley and circled around.

The Azn Bad Boys was a parahuman-anemic race-oriented Asian gang that managed to have enormous success. It took in East-Asians of any ethnicity, and managed to keep them in line somehow — considering, say, the enmity between Japanese and Chinese, that was saying something.

‘Parahuman-anemic’ as in it was more or less one guy who had powers that mattered any in that gang, and he was the leader. He had a lieutenant who was a scary killer, but the main ‘don’t mess with us’ came from just the leader.

Comparing the approximately twenty two capes of the Neo-Nazi Empire Eighty-Eight — the other extreme of the spectrum — that was impressive. It also meant the chances of encountering a cape enforcer was roughly nil.

I found a vantage point in an alley on the opposite side of the road, and observed. It was a group of young men, standing in the darkness. In the light of lighter flames, I saw asian features and spotted the green and red gang colors of ABB. One of them wore a white t-shirt, and sticking out of his waistband was a dark outline — undoubtedly a pistol.

More worrying, there was about eight of them, and they were hanging around on street, in front of an open door from which light and faint music was emanating; and through which there was occasional traffic of yet more thugs.

Perhaps it was just a peaceful gathering, but the number of armed gang members here was worrying.

I circled around, crossing the street about three blocks down, ducked into the back alleys and came up on the back side of the building they were gathering in front of — probably a safe house of some kind. It was a two-storey thing, with a handy fire escape. I thust my batons through my belt, and with a standing jump I reached the lowest rung of the ladder and pulled myself up with ease — super strength was handy.

Quickly, I ascended, taking care not to rattle too much, and reached the roof — flat and covered in gravel. With my boots, walking across that would give me away. Instead I took to walking on the raised lip of the roof, as quietly as I could.

* * *

Ten minutes of waiting paid off. I was lying flat on my belly — not that anyone would have spotted me in the dark, but it didn’t hurt to take the precaution — listening to the conversations below.

Only about half of it was in English, and mostly consisted of shooting the breeze. Sexist, racist, belligerent breeze shooting. Most of these guys had been spooled into crime from a young age, according to modern criminology. You went about feeling like you didn’t belong, and ‘cool kids’ with gang contacts inducted you.

And all of the now about sixteen armed thugs fell silent at once, as a shadow occluded the light from the door. Out into the night stepped a mountain of a man, bare chested, covered in tattoos, wearing a gleaming metal mask.

Lung. The one man who held ABB together.

The guy, who had made his introduction into the power vacuum made by the capture of Marquis by taking on the entire force of the Bay Protectorate and winning.

The ‘Dragon of Kyushu’ who had fought Leviathan head on and won.

If there ever was a time where discretion was the better part of valor, it was now. Then he opened his mouth and began talking with a heavy accent.

“Last week, we got robbed. By naughty children — ‘Undersiders.’ Now, we show them messing with us gets you messed up, gets you killed. Four kids with shit powers, they will see the only thing that matters is strength. Oni Lee leads another group. No way they get away this time.”

There was a murmur of assent.

“Bullets are cheap. When you see the children, just shoot. Doesn’t matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chance to be clever or lucky.”

This warranted immediate action. Best case, I could prevent a massacre, worst case I’d get killed, but I wasn’t stupid enough to fight Lung head on.


	7. IV

Getting up carefully, I tiptoed back to the fire escape and took out my burner phone.

The PRT emergency hotline was on speed dial.

“Parahuman Response Team, what is your emergency?” A woman asked me.

“I’ve just overheard Lung plan a massacre of some sort. He is at what looks to be a safe house down Ford Road —” I recalled the house number which I had only caught a glimpse of “— 702. There’s about a dozen gang members with him, they are armed.”

“We’ll have a dispatch on your location in five minutes. May I ask your name?” she asked me.

“New hero, no name yet, I wear a black outfit, with striped sleeves, blue headgear, red scarf, star on one knee,” I supplied. It was the obvious next question.

“Miss,” she said gravely. “I’ll strongly advise you to—”

I hung up. She was going to tell me to book it, which was the safe thing to do. I didn’t have time.

The implication was that Lung was about to get involved with another gang — the ‘Undersiders.’ Not anyone I had heard of, but they had apparently robbed a casino, and consisted of ‘children,’ which I took to mean teenagers, at least.

I hoped so.

But for all that they were criminals, I wasn’t about to let Lung commit murder with impunity. Five minutes was enough time for Lung and his cronies to disappear and go do the grisly deed. I weighted my options — and found I had nothing.

If I understood Lung’s power correctly, he was dangerous because as the fight went on he got stronger, while everyone else got weaker due to exhaustion. Apart from that, he was as predictable as a hammer blow — no tricky aspect to his power at all.

So naturally, the thing to do was to open the fight with overwhelming force, kill him if I had to. It would paint a target on my back, but it was in clear defence of others — or something like that; another thing I needed to read up on, was law.

My eyes fell on an air-conditioning unit in a window within arms reach of the fire escape, next to an open window. an ACU was about sixty pounds, and very sturdy. A tumbling cube had a drag coefficient somewhere south of one, with a cross-sectional area of about two square feet, putting it’s terminal velocity at around one hundred and sixty feet per second.

I would have liked to have something heavier and denser.

Swinging my legs over the fire escape railing, I peered in the window: dark, but presumably with ABB close by. I pulled the window open, and climbed in.

Then it was a quick matter of loosening the screws with my knife, and rather precariously lifting the AC to the fire escape — it wasn’t heavy, compared to my lifting strength, but it had enough mass to put me off balance.

Up on the roof again, I tip-toed back to the front of the building, and to my relief, Lung was still there.

I took a deep breath, visualized, then lifted the AC over my head in a swinging motion, silently hopping up to get some extra height, then followed it back down, curling up and pulling it down, accelerating it much more than a straight fall would. It covered the distance to Lung’s skull in less than half a second, and connected with a loud smash.

Yelling erupted, but as soon as I had a confirmed hit, I was already running across the roof for the fire-escape. I didn’t bother with the stairs, but jumped to level below, then jumped the railing, and landed on the street in a roll, continuing into a run.

Parkour, as the art was called, was mostly a matter of knowing your limits, daring to take the jump, and not fucking up the landing; all of which took training for baseline humans to master. It came as second nature to me, although I was nowhere near a master.

Rounding the back corner of the building in a dead sprint, I set my power to recovering spent ATP and breaking down lactic acid as soon as it started to form; additionally, I deliberately hyperventilated, over-oxygenating my blood. I had long since guarded against the risk of hypoxia from decreases breathing response when doing so; it was incredibly useful to have high oxygen concentrations in the blood.

I shot out of the alley opening furthest from the gang members, heading for an alley across the street. Making no effort to conceal my footfalls, and the gang members being savvy enough to know I had been on the roof, heard. Some of them opened fire, but hitting a moving target was hard, and the shots went wide. I vaulted a car hood and disappeared into the alleyway.

When I rounded the back corner, I stopped and waited, back against the wall.

With one hand, I drew a baton, with the other, the knife, holding it so I was ready to plunge it into whomever might come around the corner.

If these guys were smart, they’d try to flank me, but given the speed at which I had left, they probably assumed I was a mover of some sort — I hoped. However, I was hoping Lung might pursue me.

Behind me, I heard an animistic roar of fury, and soon after footfalls. Orange light flickered from the alley I had run through, and within a three seconds, Lung reached my hiding place. I reacted faster than him — I knew he was going to be bigger, and possibly armor clad by now, so I went directly for his eye. For extra speed, I let my power control my muscles directly.

Bruce Lee could, in his heyday, punch people in three hundredth of a second. I managed something similar — for all his superhuman ability, Lung had only had about ten seconds to ramp up. My knife plunged into his eyeball before he could even blink.

Just as quickly, I withdrew my knife, as he began to roar in pain, spun around and stuck him in the face with my pipe as hard as I could — a bone breaking impact.

I didn’t stay to watch the results, instead I turned and ran. Behind me, the alley was engulfed in a fireball, and I felt the heat on the back of my neck. If had hadn’t tied my hair, it would have gotten singed.

With Lung growing ever bigger, in a very literal hot pursuit behind me, I sprinted through the alley, reaching the end of the block, and turning down the street. Alleys held obstacles like dumpsters, open streets did not. Behind me, Lung tore out of the alley and collided with a parked car. I spared a look over my shoulder — he was almost ten feet tall, and his upper body was covered in armor scales.

As he got to his feet again after the crash, stationary for a moment, something fell out of the sky and smashed him flat against the ground. It was gigantic, quadrupedal and distinctly beast-like.

Another one landed not far away, as Lung erupted in flames under the beast on top of him. It leapt off, and the other one charged in with claws and teeth.

They were the size of cars, and I watched with fascination as they both bit into Lung and began tearing him apart like two dogs fighting over a chew toy. With a sickening pop, and rip, his arm came clean off.

Then a third one joined the fray, and I turned to run, but escaping my notice, four costumed youngsters — going by the builds of two of them — had come up behind me. I drew my batons.

Good bet it was the villains Lung intended to go after. Their body language read gratitude, but discretion and valor…


	8. V

“Whoa there, we’re not here to pick a fight,” one of them said. Tall, dressed in black motorcycle gear — the visor of his helmet was fashioned as a skull.

“I know,” I replied. “You’re the ones Lung was going after.”

“Grue,” one of them said — a girl in a bodysuit, wearing a domino mask. Blonde, shapely. “Let me handle this.” There was a note of… Apprehension in her voice?

The guy turned to look at her, and stiffened imperceptively.

I cocked my head to one side. A deliberate signal of non-aggression.

“We owe you one,” she said, and meant it. “Lung and his lieutenant Oni Lee were going to attack us in retaliation, but you already know that.” There was a smugness in her voice. “We decided to meet them in the field, mix things up compared to our usual cloak-and-dagger MO. Oni Lee doesn’t have much initiative on his own, so he booked it as soon as his boss didn’t show.”

If I had it gauged right, she was the party ‘face,’ while he was the leader. The others were two odd sorts. One, a very stout girl — going by the plait skirt — with only the barest semblance of a costume: street clothes and a plastic Rottweiler mask. The other, a young man in a loose button down, tight pants, a theatre mask, crown and carrying a sceptre.

None of them looked like combatants, but if the monsters were theirs, it didn’t look like they needed it.

“I’m Tattletale, this is Grue, Bitch and Regent,” she gestured to each of her companions in turn.

“Damn,” the boy with the crown — Regent — said, “Lung is getting his ass kicked.”

“She hit him hard and fast, he is concussed to hell and back,” Tattletale said. “What did you drop on him?”

She knew I had attacked from above, which definitely implied she knew things. A Thinker power? Would account for the distinctly non-combat oriented outfit.

“An AC Unit,” I said. “Stabbed him in the eye too.” Then I took a gamble. “I called the PRT, they should be here soon.”

“I know,” she said. “We’ve got time. What’s your name?”

I didn’t get a chance to open my mouth.

“… You haven’t decided on one yet,” she completed for me. “Here’s some advice, Miss America, if the heroes catch you out here? They don’t stumble on two villains duking it out and then let one of them go— but you want to be a hero?”

She definitely had a power — I had no tells, period.

“Well, if you ever change your mind about that, or just need a favor, I’m sure you can figure out how to contact us,” she said. “Bitch?”

The stout girl reacted, whistling. The sounds of fighting behind me ceased, and the three monsters whizzed past me, and between us. Then the four climbed onto the backs of the monsters, and they rode off.

I turned and looked at Lung. The road was slick with gore, and a man-shaped chewed up mass of bone, skin, flesh and organs lay there. The only thing that convinced me that he wasn’t dead, was that it was burning and moving still. Even from here, I saw the wounds stitching themselves back together. I estimated he would be up and about in about twenty minutes.

That’s when I heard the heroes arrive — the roar of an engine was the first giveaway. The second was a man in a red suit appearing more or less out of thin air. I recognized him as the resident Protectorate speedster, Velocity.

“You’re the hero who called it in?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said, with some amount of pride. It could have gone horrible in many, many, many ways. I deserved to feel good about it.

“Damn,” he said and looked at Lung.

“That part wasn’t me,” I said. “Another group intervened. They left.”

“OK,” he said, not completely convinced.

The motorcycle rolled up, carrying a guy in blue power armor. He wasted no time with chit-chat, heading straight for Lung. It was Armsmaster, the Protectorate leader, and Tinker extraordinaire.

While other heroes had superhuman abilities built in, Armsmaster only had the ability to create tech far beyond the bleeding edge of science, as all Tinkers did, and was otherwise a baseline human. Yet, his career was as impressive as anybody with physics defying abilities up to their eyeballs. If you looked up ‘punching above your weight class’ in the dictionary, you’d find a biography of him.

He jabbed the writhing villain with the end of his halberd, and Lung almost immediately came to lie still. Then his halberd transformed itself into a steel cage, which anchored itself in the tarmac with red-hot spikes.

Then he returned to me and Velocity. If I had been possessed of less self-control, I might have fainted. I had idolized these guys.

“Good job taking out Lung,” Armsmaster said. If I were to guess, he was hard to impress. “No mean feat.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “I had help. There was another group — villains — presented themselves as Tattletale, Grue, Regent—”

Armsmaster cut me off. “The Undersiders.” His lips flashed resentment.

I nodded. “Have they been giving you trouble?”

“They are difficult to get a bearing on,” he said. An understatement — they had been giving him a lot of trouble.

Throwing him a bone might get on his good side. “One of them — Tattletale — she knew things I didn’t tell her. That’s a Thinker power, right?”

“That fits with the evidence,” he replied. Pleased.

Another cape landed next to us — Assault. He wore a costume that resembled the fuselage of a fighter jet, with it’s sleek streamlining. His ability was some kind of touch-based kinetic manipulation. It was good to see the dispatch had taken ‘Lung about to commit a massacre’ seriously.

“So, I assume Lung is going into custody, and that means you’ll have a press conference,” I said.

“Probably, yes,” Armsmaster said.

I sheathed my batons in my belt. Took out the instant camera, and handed it to Assault. “Armsmaster, would you pose for a picture with me?”

Assault chuckled, and I took up position between him and Lung’s cage in the background.

“And take two — one for me, one for the press.”

“I like this one already,” Assault said.


	9. VI

I elaborated on the battle, they fed me a Wards recruitment pitch, and Assault took to calling me ‘Spangles.’ I asked for an autograph, and Armsmaster signed a calling card. I left when I heard a convoy of vans approaching.

I headed for the place I’d stowed my civilian clothes — in the duffel bag, under a derelict air duct on the roof of an abandoned apartment complex.

As I went, I let the emotions wash over me — thrill and dread. I’d dodged death — not certain death, but it had been a close brush. I’d done something reprehensibly stupid in defence of… Well, not exactly innocents.

Dad would chew me out for it, no doubt. And if the heroes were reputable, they would release a Polaroid of me and Armsmaster, in front of a cage with a sedated Lung. Or maybe not, in retrospect that would be pretty grisly.

And probably earn me the enmity of the ABB. I took out the burner phone and texted the number on Armsmaster’s calling card.

> 
>         spangles here
>     
>     on second thought maybe keep
>     my picture out of the press
>     the ABB might bust my ass over it
>     
>     circulate an internal memo instead?
>       

A minute later, I got a reply.

> 
>         I'll tell PR. Everything
>     goes in the report.
>     
>     --- A
>       

I replied:

> 
>         thanks
>       

So far, heroing was going well.

* * *

It was half past one A.M. when I got home, and I checked to see if Dad had waited up for me despite my explicit advice to the contrary.

Stopping by his bedroom door, I quietly called out: “Dad?”

Shortly thereafter, he opened the door, and relief was evident in his face. “Good to see you back in one piece. How was your first patrol?”

I handed him the photograph. “Velocity is off to the right, Assault is the photographer, the one in the cage is Lung — from ABB.”

His eyes went wide.

* * *

After telling Dad what I had been up to and why — and reassuring him that I wouldn’t try anything as risky in the future — I went to bed. Once a week or so, I would sleep in earnest, and today seemed viable. If I had wanted changes to the status quo, I had them now: repute with the heroes, Hess was gone, Dad and I were on the path to reconnecting.

And I had almost died. I went over the events of tonights battle again — every step of it had been well reasoned, and the intent was morally pure, but it had been a huge risk. One wrong step — a statistically unlikely event, but still — could have cost me my life. In the future I would have to be good instead of lucky, or the law of large numbers would be my doom.

With that thought brought to end, I let myself fall asleep.

* * *

I awoke at a little after six in the morning — three full sleep cycles later. I went downstairs and started cooking breakfast. I’d begun doing so when I began messing with my sleep and self motivation. Laziness did not exist in me, and it made Dad happy.

My morning routine was a lot shorter when personal hygiene was augmented by superpowers — all I really needed was a rinse every second day. Odor, dirt, skin oils — everything was tightly managed. I went running mostly for the fresh air.

Upstairs, Dad woke up and went to shower. I could have theoretically eschewed the whole ‘morning ritual’ thing, now that my circadian rhythm was under conscious control, but Dad’s wasn’t. And I suppose there was psychological benefits in keeping up with humanity — it would be bad if I started thinking of baseline humans as ‘inferior.’

Even calling them ‘baseline’ was a bad habit. A source of bias built into language and conceptualization that I might have to fix.

While coffee brewed and pancakes sizzled, I turned on the TV, in time for the morning news on the local station, to keep an ear to the ground. There was a segment about unemployment efforts, something about city ordnances concerning organized crime… Which segued into the cape news segment.

“In a stunning turn of events Sunday night, the leader of the Azn Bad Boys gang, a supervillain known as Lung, was captured by local Protectorate heroes. An elusive, independent hero lend a hand in the capture which reportedly interrupted Lung and his gang from committing a massacre against another small time villain team.”

No Polaroid, minimal description of myself. Acceptable.

“As part of the very same press release, the Protectorate reported that the ward Shadow Stalker is stopping as active Ward, citing personal reasons.”

That was… Strange. Wards usually didn’t just ‘stop.’ Shadow Stalker, from what I could tell on the Parahumans Online boards, was a loose canon, with a record of toeing the line of unacceptable brutality. She had been a vigilante before joining.

Perhaps she had stepped over the line, and they didn’t want to lose face? It smelled like forced retirement. And I needed more information.


	10. VII

In homeroom computer class I had been given free reign. My self-taught computer skills already surpassed anything Ms. Nott could teach me, so she let me do whatever I wished so long as I handed in the assignments.

We had been tasked with creating a calculator app in BASIC — with a bit of twiddling, I had made a full scientific calculator, using arbitrary precision numbers, and with the ability to assign names to values for later use, almost making it a small programming language. It also included SI units and a couple of physical constants. The parser was a hack, but the code was readable, well-commented, and easy to grasp.

Satisfied with my efforts, I took to browsing PhO.

The wiki yielded some information about the Undersiders: a relatively recent gang, focusing on well-planned heists. Their members… Tattletale’s article was a stub — no info. Grue’s was sparse, but listed his power as ‘darkness generation’ — whatever that meant. Regent didn’t even have a page.

Bitch was for some reason listed as Hellhound. She had a long biography, and apparently no secret identity. She had triggered at age twelve, violently and obviously, in Maine. That was five years ago. For five years she had a vagrant fugitive from the law, using only her monster dogs to evade capture. Some feat.

On the discussion boards, I navigated to the news section and found the main threads about Lung’s capture, and Shadow Stalker’s resignation.

Tonnes of baseless speculation about the identity of the elusive independent hero — to be expected.

What caught my eye was in the other thread: someone cited a PRT rumor that Shadow Stalker had in fact been a probationary Ward, and had committed a crime that would net jail time.

Even adjusting for the ‘rumor’, the unreliability of the rumormonger’s past account activity, the enormous favor of the null hypothesis — coincidences did in fact happen; I had a notion.

Hypothesis: Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker.

It was as spectacularly unlikely as any “person X is the civilian identity of cape Y” hypothesis, but the more I thought, the more evidence popped up.

There was a Winslow Ward — in that way, it wasn’t impossible.

Winslow’s management was ‘corrupt’ — for lack of a better term — enough to excuse otherwise unacceptable behavior if it meant keeping the prestige of the Winslow Ward. It fit my personality profile of Blackwell. She wouldn’t do it consciously, but there would be a strong bias.

I went over confirmed sightings of Shadow Stalker during school hours and referenced it with my memory — sure enough, Sophia was never present when Shadow Stalker was seen out and about. Again, not strong evidence.

Finding videos of Shadow Stalker, she had the same height build as Sophia, and they moved in similar ways, even if Shadow Stalker put on a pantomime, I identified body language tells. Further, to my ear, their voices matched.

There was one more thing I could do, but it warranted a call to the police station, and I didn’t have a phone. I excused myself and headed for the principal’s office.

* * *

“Mrs. Hebert, what can I do for you?” Blackwell’s secretary asked me. A friendly older woman, who acted as proxy for most student requests to the principal’s office.

“I’d like to make a phone call,” I said. “It concerns the case last week where Sophia assaulted me during detention.”

Her eyes widened a little.

“Could you find the case file?” I asked. “I need to call one of the police officers in question, regarding the legal case — I just have a quick question about the proceedings of his investigation.”

She got up from her chair. “Should I fetch the principal? Perhaps we should contact your parents?”

I shook my head. “It’s nothing serious, I promise.” I put on my best display of innocence. It was very convincing.

“I’m not sure—” she said.

I looked down and away. “Please? Blackwell— She would try to obstruct justice. I know it sounds weird, but I’ve been costing the school a lot of money in settlements — you heard about the locker incident?”

The secretary nodded.

I shuddered. “My Dad sued — it was gross negligence. We didn’t have money to hire lawyers, so we took the settlement.

“Blackwell? She doesn’t want justice, she doesn’t want the school to be a better place. She wants prestige and government funds.”

It was a tidy little piece of narrative. I was an underdog, fighting for truth, justice and the American Way, Blackwell was a corrupt government official.

“If the principal finds out, she might take it as a sign of dissent. I could lose my job,” she replied.

A perfectly reasonable objection.

“She won’t, as I said, it’s a completely harmless question.”

Grudgingly, she went along with it and fetched the case file.

* * *

I called the police station, and got through to one of the two cops that had responded on Friday.

“This is Officer Marcus, who am I speaking to?”

I didn’t know who that was — the heavy set or the lean one of them.

“Hey, I’m Taylor Hebert,” I said. “I was the victim of an assault from a fellow student on Friday — Winslow High?”

“Ah, yeah, of course. What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering, you are investigating the case?” I asked.

“Well yeah, but… Look, kid, my investigation was terminated. It’s out of our hands now. The— Feds, took over. We handed over all the evidence and your statement to them.”

The hesitation in his voice was a dead giveaway. No way the bullying crossed state lines, and the PRT was technically ‘feds.’ Police officers were instructed not to disclose when the PRT got involved, since it compromised the civilian identity of capes if they did.

“Oh,” I said, with palpable disappointment. “What bureau?”

“The DEA; apparently some drugs were involved.”

A flat lie. It was the PRT.

“OK… That’s fine, I guess. As long as justice prevails.”

“Don’t worry, kid. The feds aren’t all bad,” he replied.

Yes. Yes they were. I hung up.


	11. VIII

For the first time in months, I wasn’t wearing a baggy hoodie and loose jeans. I had chosen my tightest pair of jeans, my smallest back tee, red shoes, and wearing my hoodie tied around my waist. My hair was in a ponytail, and I walked with confidence in my stride.

Truthfully it only added to the rumours — here I was, butterfly closures on my lip and brow, two black eyes, going to school like I owned the world. Sophia was gone, and rumors circulated wildly.

At lunch break, I headed for the cafeteria. Sophia’s absence would make Emma’s consolidated power base wobble, and I wanted to deal her a blow.

Since the locker incident, the trio had put me through a variety of torments. Destroyed and stolen my stuff, subjected me to deniable violence, splashed me with water or soda on a few occasions, and the general ambient jeering.

Outwards, I had put on a charade of it affecting me, but it hadn’t. I could have left it at that, but I wanted to make sure no-one else suffered as I had, at the hands of Emma.

She was sitting with Madison and a part of their clique. I walked directly up to her.

“Look who’s here,” Madison jeered. “She actually looks better after Sophia messed her up.”

I didn’t even look at Madison. I locked eyes with Emma, and handed her a note. “I need to talk to you in private.” Deadly serious.

If Sophia was Shadow Stalker, there was a good chance Emma knew. They were close — Emma had replaced me with Sophia.

“What the fuck, Taylor, you weirdo” Emma said, and opened the note. She read the four-and-a-half words inside and her reaction told me all I needed to know. Fear.

> _I know Sophia’s Secret._

Immediately she crumbled the paper and threw it at my face. “Fuck off,” she said.

“Your loss,” I said, and turned away. Behind me I heard Madison ask what I wanted. I heard Emma reply that I was hoping we could be friends again. They laughed.

* * *

By the end of lunch break, some boy — one of the poor souls Emma had wrapped around her little finger — told me Emma wanted to speak with me after school.

We met behind the bleachers.

“What do you mean ‘you know Sophia’s secret,’ she doesn’t have any,” Emma said.

“Oh, I’m sure,” I replied, sarcastically. “She’s not a masked vigilante or anything, and Shadow Stalker resigning this morning is just coincidence.”

Emma squinted at me. “What do you want?”

“I want you to stop,” I said. “I want you to put that bullshit ideology behind you, and cut Sophia out of your life.”

Emma crossed her arms.

I continued. “She’s a sociopath and you know it. She seduced you with her philosophy. Well, guess what— I’m not weak. And you know it. I’m the strongest person you know, and you—” I ventured an educated guess at her reasons. With my newfound social intelligence, my admittedly rudimentary knowledge of psychology, and all the years we had spent together as friends, it was a good guess.

“You brought it wholesale because you were hurt.”

That stung her, hard.

“What happened?” I asked, letting my voice grow milder. “I’m not angry— well, I am, but I’ll forgive you. We used to be friends, Emma…”

There was a lot of repressed emotion in her — anger, indignation, disgust, fear, shame, all flashed across her face.

“Why the fuck are you so nice to me?” she snarled. “What’s your angle? What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” I said. “The truth, perhaps.” Uttered with a zen-like calm and inviting body language. “I want to be friends again, Emma.”

* * *

She broke down crying.

ABB had attacked her and her father that summer, two years ago. She had been threatened with mutilation and rape, and Sophia — then a vigilante, had swooped in and saved her. She hadn’t gone to see a therapist, instead she had helped Sophia out in her vigilante activities.

Emma Barnes had been a side-kick. Sophia had committed manslaughter, and had been offered a plea bargain: probationary Wards membership.

And Sophia had implicitly demanded that Emma demonstrate her ‘strength.’ I vividly remembered that first insult. But clinging to my resentment was — I had heard someone say it was like ‘drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.’

I’d probably never get to be good friends with Emma, but she didn’t deserve me hating her — I could crush her like a bug, and true strength was not doing that in retaliation. True strength was, in some sense, inaction. Forgiveness.

“Emma, I don’t want you to feel guilty,” I said.

She was dabbing her eyes, coming away with smudges of mascara and eyeliner. We sat under the bleachers — where I knew drug deals sometimes took place. At one point, two guys had peeked their heads in and seen two girls occupying their hidey hole; one of them looking like a cage fighter. I’d shot them a glare, and they wisely hadn’t bothered us.

“If you beat yourself up over all the stuff you did, you’re gonna spiral into depression.”

She looked at me. “What if I can’t?”

“I’m telling you not to,” I said. “If you want to do right by me, go see a therapist. You feeling guilty doesn’t make me feel better.”


	12. IX

Sophia had been a Ward — a probationary Ward — she had committed a felony, gotten probation, and then the PRT had failed to keep a good enough eye on an obvious sociopath.

That didn’t make them seem very trustworthy.

I’d said my goodbyes to Emma, and we had parted. I headed to the library.

It was a confirmation of a lot of my suspicions. Corruption. Not the overt, money-for-own-gain kind of corruption, but the kind caused by prejudice and bias, apparently reigned with too much force; even in the PRT/Protectorate/Wards.

Which was worrying when you were ‘the good guys.’ Either, I could join up, show my propensity for management, spend my entire career optimizing things… Well, if I could. I had no delusions of grandeur, but I was very, very smart. Most smart people got into more trouble when they tried to be clever, and it took wisdom to not do so.

While I lacked wisdom, I was sure to pick it up quickly. My principles of humility and forgiveness already served me well. Pettiness was unbecoming.

If I made a career out of heroism, I could undoubtedly do great things. On the other hand, I was in a unique position. The Undersiders…

There was something troubling about them. First of all, they seemed disparate. Grue had done small-scale crime. Tattletale was a nonentity before the Undersiders, Regent was an enigma, and Bitch was… Her wiki article listed her as ‘a dangerous sociopath.’ Not exactly a stable team member.

Either Tattletale was the mastermind, or someone else was. And either way, they were giving the good guys a lot of trouble.

And they owed me a favor. I wondered if ‘membership’ was on the table. I’d go in, join up, do some small stuff, learn about them, then sell them to the heroes for special consideration. Or if there was another mastermind, sell him out too.

Make the city a little safer with what I had — opportunities not afforded by established heroes.

I reached the library, got my hands on a computer, and logged onto PhO.

Getting into contact with them while maintaining plausible deniability was going to be troublesome. I navigated to the ‘Connections’ section: where rescued damsels could ask to meet their heroes again.

I searched for ‘Tattletale’ and came up with many inane, crude messages addressed to her; which was to be expected when she was blonde, young, and attractive.

Remembering her words from the night before, I recalled her calling me ‘Miss America,’ like the beauty pageant. A search for that yielded a few hits — comparisons, derisions, metaphors, and one simply titled: Miss America.

> 
>         Subject: Miss America
>     
>     About that favor?
>     
>     -- Tt.
>       

She would have known, or at least suspect I was going to search for that. I began typing up a reply.

> 
>         Subject: Re: Miss America
>     
>     Proof of who you are?
>     
>     -- Miss America
>       

The response came after only a minute.

> 
>         Subject: Re: Miss America
>     
>     Your hat was blue, your scarf was red, striped sleves.
>     The big guy had an incident with an AC, and you poked him in the eye.
>     G started talking to you, but I told him I'd handle it.
>     
>     Good enough?
>       

I replied in kind:

> 
>         Subject: Re: Miss America
>     
>     I wanna meet.
>       

* * *

She had ever so subtly hinted that her and her crew would ‘come as they were’ and not be in ‘formal wear,’ then proposed we meet where we had met the previous night. Then she had subtly dropped the hint that she knew where I was.

It was… Charming. Intriguing, that there was someone who could keep up with me and surprise me.

With my admittedly light backpack — I’d read and almost memorized all my school books — I strode towards the Docks at a brisk pace once more. In my pocket lay my pepper spray, and in my bag I carried a length of pipe like the batons for my costume, but unadorned.

The Docks, in the light of day, were bleak. The garbage piles were different — implying someone had moved them, and people were going to and fro — some of them looking quite respectable. Just because you were poor, or lived in a bad part of town, didn’t mean you couldn’t have nice things.

The ruined car — from when Lung had smashed into it — was still there, wrapped in police tape.

And beside it was three teenagers. Matching their height, characteristics, and body language, I matched them to their costumed identities before getting within conversation range. Letting them know my identity was perhaps a gamble, but the Thinker girl was powerful enough that I was sure she could figure it out anyway.

I stopped a few steps from them, demonstratively. There was a good chance they knew what I was capable of, physically — outrunning Lung, and punching just as hard as that implied. If it came down to a fight right here and now, I maim at least one of them.

That train of thought was rather dark, so I shoved it aside.

Their team distribution — I wouldn’t claim to know a lot about parahuman tactics — lacked a close quarters heavy hitter. I could technically fill that role. That was what I had to offer.

The question was what negotiating strategy I would use — I hardly had a personality profile to go by and the Thinker girl had no tells, so far as I could see; perhaps a secondary power enabling her to lie better?

I thought quickly and carefully, but it was for naught. The black haired boy — a handsome, dare I say ‘pretty’ young man — who was Regent when in costume, broke the silence.

“Wow, OK, so when are you two going to kiss?”

That got a snort of laughter from the tall black guy, who inhabited Grue. He had cornrows and the build of an athlete.

The girl couldn’t help but smile. She had freckles, which her domino mask hid, and also her cheekbones seemed different without the contour.

“Shut up, Alec, oh my god — I’m trying to be intellectually intimidating here.”

I giggled. It was genuinely funny. “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s just talk instead. I’m Taylor.”

“Brian.” “Lisa.” “Alec,” they introduced themselves in turn.

“What can we do for you?” Brian asked.

I looked them each in the eye in turn. “I want in. Turns out heroism is not for me. Maybe some day when I get caught — I’ll tell you why.”


	13. X

In a hushed voice, I outlined the deal: how Sophia had been bullying me, how I had coaxed her into assaulting me, how I had figured out she was Shadow Stalker, and that I found the Wards… Unsuitable.

I left out Emma, and the fact that I had weaponize aerosolized epinephrine…

The whole time, all three of them were silent, their faces a mix of astonishment and amusement. Then Brian spoke. “First Lung, now Shadow Stalker? Lisa, you are no longer my favourite colleague.”

Alec cackled. “Brian is in loo~ve!”

“I don’t—” I said. “What?”

Lisa grinned — she reminded me of a fox, modulo red hair. “Shadow Stalker had gotten it into her head that Grue was her ‘nemesis’ or some shit; their powers interact weirdly. She shot him with a crossbow bolt once — arrowhead tip. I’m his favourite colleague because I plan all our heists. We’ve been looking for a fifth member, but we had expected to do some recruiting, not that anyone would come to us.”

The brains of the operation. She swung her bag off her shoulder, and rummaged through it, withdrawing a novelty Alexandria lunch box, handing it to me.

I turned it over; there was something heavy inside. A first guess would be cash. I didn’t open it, I just shoved it in my own bag.

“You make it look like a drug deal,” Alec said and giggled.

“How much?” I asked.

“Two grand,” Brian replied. My eyes would have widened in surprise. “That’s a gift, by the way,” he added. “And a promise. If you join us, you’ll get that every month — and that’s just for being an Undersider, being active, getting a say in matters. To that, add the haul from the jobs we do, split between us.”

“Where do I sign?” I said, to which Lisa laughed.

“Say, Taylor, would you like to see our wretched hive of scum and villainy?” she asked.

“If it means the place you hang out when you are not robbing people, sure!” I replied with a smile.

* * *

They led me through the Docks, to an old brick factory, and we made smalltalk as we went. Brian did some boxing, Lisa was a proficient hacker, Alec was from Canada. I got the vibe that Brian and Lisa were the most active members — the jury was still out on their fourth member, given that I hadn’t met her. Alec seemed passive.

Something about him irked me, minor deviations from expected microexpressions and haptic cues. Nothing I could name.

Overall, they were very pleasant people, if you forgot the fact that they made a living stealing people’s shit. There was a thought — how profitable might it actually be to rob casinos? Insufficient data on that one. I needed to do more research. Potentially, something didn’t add up here.

The old brick factory was a brick building — heh — with three storeys. Brian unlocked a padlocked chain on a large door to let us in, and we went through an empty factory floor to a staircase. Up on the next level was a similar empty factory floor.

But under the roof, on the second floor, that was a different story. I ascended into a well-furnished living room that more or less constituted every teenager’s dream. Big, roomy sofas, an enormous television set, surround sound, a huge DVD collection, every current-gen gaming console…

“Rachel?” Brian called out, but didn’t get an answer. “Probably out with her dogs.”

Connecting to the living space was a sort of hallway, delimited by room dividing walls — six cubicles, going by the doors, three on either side of the hallway. Each door was adorned with identifying marks: notably, the universal symbol for bathroom.

One had a crown, one had the all seeing eye of god — the top of the pyramid on the dollar bills, basically — one had a dog’s face, one had a girl with puckered lips. All of it was done in spray paint, with no small amount of artistic finesse.

Unabashedly, I let myself walk, taking in the sights, letting them know I was appreciating their entertainment setup, lingering by the art on the doors. “What’s in here?” I asked.

“Our rooms,” Alec said. “Me, Lisa, and Rachel — Bitch — live here. Brian has his own apartment.”

Past the cubicles was a fully fitted kitchen, with a dining table that could seat six. And of course, it was all a mess. Evidence of at least three days of takeout-based diet, empty packets of candy and junk food… “You need a maid,” I said.

Alec snorted.

“Seriously,” I said and opened the cupboards. The pots and pans had dust on them. “When did you last cook a real meal?”

That got a real laugh from him. I was only half joking.

“Speaking of, should we—” Brian said.

“Yes. We can clear out the storage room,” Lisa replied.

I came back at a light jog, projecting excitement and innocence. “What?”

“A room,” Alec said. “Brian doesn’t have one, and these two —” he gestured to Lisa and Brian “— have argued about it, tons. See, if you get hurt, you need somewhere to lay low. When that Shadow bitch shot Brian, he recovered on the couch, ruined a nice white leather couch with blood stains.”

I nodded. It made a lot of sense. “So does this mean I’m a member?”

“Yeah, you earned that by taking out Shadow Stalker, in my book,” Brian said.

I gave a little jump of joy. “Although,” I said. “Not sure I need a room, really — hear me out.” Lisa had been about to object. “I don’t need to sleep, and I have a healing factor — though bit on the slow side.”

There was a bit of a stunned silence. “Holy hell, did you win the power lottery,” Alec said. “Stay up all night, every night? I could use that.”

* * *

We took to the sofa arrangement — my exited puppy act held charm, but soft seating held more sway.

“Before we discuss anything further, let’s talk business arrangements—” Brian opened.

“I have a question,” I interjected.

Pause for effect, everyone’s attention was on me.

“Who’s bankrolling you?”

It was a gamble, but seemed a likely theory. The way they had talked about the monthly payments seemed like it came from an external source — ‘to that, add the haul from the jobs we do’ — and it would also provide an explanation for who had brought the team together.

Their reactions told me I was right.

“Damn, you’re good,” Lisa said. “What was that, microexpression reading?”

“Guessing,” I replied.

“Well, it seems we won’t be able to keep anything from you,” Brian said. “We have a mysterious benefactor, whom only Lisa speaks to. She knows his identity — can’t really keep secrets around her — but she keeps it from the rest of us at his request.

“Sometimes he gives us jobs to do, but very loosely. Mostly we do our own thing,” he finished.

“And sleep in giant piles of money,” Alec added.

This was everything I had hoped for.


	14. XI

It sounded sad when I thought about it this way, but for the first time in years, I was among people my own age, who actually wanted to talk to me, and enjoyed my company.

Perhaps in another world we may have been friends, for real.

Alec broke out the soda — and beer. Technically I wasn’t allowed to drink, but technically I could hide all physical evidence of the fact, up to and including inebriation. With a bit of finagling I could probably down a bottle of vodka and pass a breath test.

But on the other hand, beer wasn’t all that tasty. Brian had one, I had a taste of one, and my grimace got a chuckle from him. Coke was a safer bet.

“So, I’m curious what you guys’ powers actually are,” I said. “The PhO wiki was pretty sparse on the subject.”

Alec smirked. “Well, I can do this,” he said, gestured, and my fingers twitched. My coke can slipped from my grip, and I caught it with my other hand before it could fall and splash over my pants and the sofa.

He had just induced an involuntary movement in me. Something highly irregular, considering the amount of control I boasted over myself.

Setting the can down, I looked at Alec. “Could you do that again?”

He did, and this time I observed — it was a hybrid interaction, really. Partially, it was direct, ex-nihilo stimulation of muscle fibres. Partially it was a membrane potential just appearing in my peripheral nerves, and partly — this was the fun part — it was the same kind of stimulation in a very small part of my motor cortex. The notable part was that it looked very much like what was happening in the part of my brain that controlled my power.

“That’s interesting,” I muttered, and picked up my can. “Again?”

“Sure thing, but this is getting weird,” Alec said.

This time, I counteracted the whole thing the instant it happened.

“Wait, what?” Brian said.

“Adaptive regeneration,” Lisa said. “Or something like it. Am I close?”

I glanced at her and made a so-so gesture with one hand. “So, neural disruption of some description? What’s your range? What’s the worst you can do?”

Alec smiled confidently. “Sight, or eight hundred metres, whichever is less. As for messing people up, coughing, sneezing, vomiting—” He sniffed and rubbed his nose with a thumb, grinning.

That was a very useful power. Few things would be as debilitating as throwing up in the middle of a fight.

“So,” I looked at Brian. “Darkness generation?”

In response, Brian held out a hand, and a cloud of smoke-like consistency manifest in his palm. By and large, it was the blackest thing I had ever seen — it absorbed all light, rendering it so dark it had no apparent texture.

“Only I can see through it. Also muffles sound; Rachel says it obscures smells; it will block your cellphone; Lisa says it can shield against radiation — not that I’ve tested that.”

To demonstrate further, the blob of darkness spread upwards, billowing, growing. It found the ceiling and started spreading out. Within seconds, the entire ceiling was inky blackness.

With a wave of his hand, the cloud dissolved into thin strands, eventually vanishing. “It lasts about twenty minutes, if I’m not in it.”

That amounted to an impressive amount of control over a situation — vomiting enemies, and complete control of visibility.

“And Rachel has the monsters?” I asked.

“Dogs,” Lisa said. “Her power lets her turn dogs into those things. They’re still dogs, though, so she has to train them exceptionally well to get them to obey. She has a secondary power that helps with that, at the expense of her ability to interact with normal people.”

I nodded. A form of brain damage from triggering? If the extra brain center in my skull was anything to go by, powers altered your brain.

“And you?” I asked Lisa. “You’re a Thinker.”

“A real know-it-all, too,” Brian interjected. “Literally.”

I tilted my head in puzzlement. “That can’t be right, you’re omniscient?”

Lisa laughed. “Not by a long shot, no. My power tells me things. Useful things, lets me draw conclusions that are impossible given the evidence. Other than that, I’m just very, very smart.”

“She’s gotten us into some deep shit a couple of times,” Brian said.

“Also got us out,” Lisa retorted.

We laughed a little at that, and I ventured a description of my own powers: “Mine’s kinda weird. It’s a kind of regeneration, but not only. I’m in peak physical condition, I’ve got a lot of body control, my reflexes are snappy, and I’m very smart — I never forget things, I always keeps my cool, I just plain think fast, that sort of thing.

“And as I mentioned, I don’t need sleep. I’m not bothered by pain, and my regeneration sometimes does unexpected things, like preventing Alec’s power from working on me.”

It was a half-truth. Functionally true.

“So, you run fast, fight good, look good, don’t need to sleep, and you’re an honor roll student?” Alec asked.

“Straight A’s,” I replied.

“Fuck off,” he drawled.


	15. XII

Our little chit-chat was — I’d say ‘rudely’ interrupted.

We had talked about team-dynamics, past jobs, what they did for fun, what I did for fun. What it was like to maintain a cape identity. It seemed that Rachel was opposed to expanding the team, despite Brian’s insistence that they needed more muscle.

They had tried recruiting the pyrokinetic Spitfire — now a member of Faultline’s crew — a while back, and Bitch had scared her off. They were worried she might attempt the same gambit this time — not that they said it in so many words. I could only imagine what a girl with three attack dogs at her beck and call might do to intimidate others.

Faultline was apparently a rival of Tattletale’s. From what I knew of my research, Faultline was a mercenary of good repute, who thrived on the same principles as the Undersiders: being smart, and picking your battles.

The interruption came right when the talk turned towards dinner. From underneath, I heard footsteps and canine claws skittering across the floor, then up the stairs, and in seconds, three dogs came up and headed straight for me.

Two big ones, one small one. One was a German Shepherd, the other some Rottweiler mix, and I’d guess the small one was a terrier, although I knew next to nothing about dogs. They made a beeline for where I was sitting, with obvious aggressive intent, reached me, and started barking and snapping at me.

Brian and Lisa started yelling, Alec started laughing, and the last member of the Undersiders, Rachel — wearing much the same clothes now as she had yesterday in ‘costume,’ came up the stairs, looking smug.

“Call off your fucking dogs!”

Were I a lesser girl, I’d have gotten startled, sprung up, and generally given the dogs an opportunity to overwhelm me. Instead, I vaulted backwards over the sofa, putting it between me and them. The two big dogs followed, but since the sofa had now been vacated, I did the obvious thing.

I reached under the frame, and with explosive force, toppled the whole thing forwards, dogs and all. The sofa fell on the coffee table, and the dogs went sprawling.

“Shit!”

With the two larger dogs otherwise occupied, I unwrapped my sweatshirt from around my waist, just in time to toss it over the smaller one, which had gotten back on mission after my distraction with the sofa. It came running, and I scooped it up, using the thick cotton to protect myself from bites, then gently lobbed it into the other, still-standing sofa.

Rachel, meanwhile — where she had looked smug — now had a note of concern in her face as she headed towards the Rottweiler who was lying squeezed between the sofa table and the impossibly voluminous and soft sofa cushions.

I intercepted her with quick strides, put a hand on her shoulder, and our eyes met. Then I punched her in the stomach hard enough to double her over.

“Don’t ever do that again,” I said.

Not waiting for an answer — I had just punched the air out of her lungs — I instead went to un-topple the sofa. The small terrier had mostly untangled itself from my hoodie, the German Shepherd had gotten to its feet and was now sniffing at Rachel’s crouching form.

When I lifted the sofa, the Rottweiler rolled upright, hopped off the table, then shook itself a little — seemingly mostly unhurt.

I glanced around at the others. Brian had a look of grave concern on his face, Alec was smiling wide, and Lisa seemed cautious, as if weighting the likely outcomes.

Now was the time to defuse the conflict. It was obvious from the way Rachel had reacted that she cared for her dogs, and I needed to show the others this would not be a source of friction. So I walked over to Rachel, and offered her a hand. The dogs growled a little as I approached.

She swatted my hand aside, and got to her feet by her own power, clutching her abdomen.

“Are you gonna be OK? Did I punch too hard?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Are the dogs OK? I tried my best not to hurt them.”

She looked at the Rottweiler, then reached out to run a hand down one of its sides. “’s fine,” she muttered.

Her body language practically screamed ‘don’t pity me, I don’t need your help.’ So instead, I turned to the others and with some amount of cheerfulness, said:

“Sorry about that. We were talking about what to order for dinner?”

“Uh…” Brian said. “Yeah.”

* * *

I borrowed a phone to call home. My burner phone was at home, and even if I had it with me, it was paramount that it never be used for personal calls — lest they could be traced to you.

Burner phones were strictly for one purpose only; in the case of mine, it had been intended for calling the cops. With my new employment, I suspected there would be rather less of that.

“Hi Dad,” I said when the call connected.

“Taylor? What’s up?”

I’d gone into the kitchen for a bit of privacy. Rachel had gone to her room — and apparently the dogs had a room as well.

“I’m hanging out with some new friends I met today; we’re going to order some Chinese food, I’ll be home late.”

There was silence on the other end for a bit, then Dad spoke.

“Taylor, if you are in any trouble, say ‘I’m fine.’ If you’re OK, say your mother’s full name.”

“Annette Rose Hebert, Dad, everything is fine. I’ll tell you some big stuff I figured out tonight.”

If I were to warrant a guess, he was nodding at the other end. We weren’t really all that good at phone conversations, him and I.

“These new friends, what are they like?”

“They’re nice. I’ll tell you all about it when I come home,” I said. An obvious dodge, but Dad probably didn’t pick up on it.

What was I supposed to say? ‘They seem like good people?’ There was a gun lying in plain sight on the kitchen counter, and I was the only person in the building not wanted for a felony.


	16. XIII

I had gone to meet with the Undersiders in the afternoon, and it was past nine when I came home.

Dad was watching TV — a British character drama he liked.

“How was your day?”

I set down my bag, kicked off my shoes, unzipped my hoodie, and took the lunch box from my backpack. This was going to be a gamble.

First of all, I knew mom had used to be in a gang. Lustrum, one of the big shots in Brockton Bay during the nineties; but not quite on the level of Marquis or Allfather. Supposedly, she had gotten out before Lustrum — who had started it all under the guise of radical feminism — started committing, or ordering her enforcers to commit, crime.

But things didn’t match up. Not entirely. I had looked up the supposed dates — Mom had left Lustrum’s gang on her last year of college; but by then, the violence had already started. I didn’t have exact dates, but even odds Mom had in fact done something criminal.

Hell, Dad was a young man with a temper during those times. Mom had always told me how she met him after the union gave him a goal in life.

“Dad, I’m about to tell you something that has to remain absolutely secret,” I said.

In recent memory, one of New Wavers capes had been attacked and killed in her civil life — New Wave had no secret identities — by an Empire Eighty-eight member. They found the perp crucified by Kaiser’s metal blades, with a handwritten apology letter addressed to New Wave stapled to his forehead.

Even the Neo Nazis thought that messing with cape’s civilian life was out of the question. The heroes played along. Reasonable enough, since it seemed to be an eye for an eye. Normally, villains fought one another, but if the heroes started going after villains’ civilian lives, I suspected the heroes would face organized resistance.

And there was a lot more villains in Brockton Bay, than heroes.

“Uh…” Dad said. “Sure. I’ll keep your secret.”

“Sophia Hess? She was Shadow Stalker, the Ward,” I said. He took a moment to process that, then his eyes widened.

“Yeah,” I said, answering an unspoken question. With the fingers on one hand I enumerated the facts.

“Sophia Hess gets arrested for assault on Friday. Shadow Stalker quits as a ward on Monday.

“The cop investigating my case tells me truthfully on the phone that the ‘feds’ took over the case.

“When I ask him, he lies and says it’s the DEA. Police can’t reveal when it’s the PRT, for obvious reasons.”

Dad nodded. “That sounds suspicious. Do you have any proof?”

I smiled. “Emma. I cornered her and brought her insecurities into the light. She told me everything. She and her father was assaulted by ABB, Shadow Staler saved her.

“Traumatized teen girl idolizes her vigilante savior.

“Vigilante is a traumatized teen girl with sociopathic tendencies and a personal philosophy of bullshit social Darwinism.

“Traumatized teen girl aims to please new friend, enacts bullying campaign against old friend to show how ‘strong.’ she is.

“Traumatized teen girl becomes vigilante sidekick.

“Vigilante commits manslaughter, takes plea bargain, becomes probationary Ward.”

My rapid fire exposition left Dad ruminating with resentment. “I’m gonna have words with Alan…”

“Maybe; honestly he isn’t worth it. If anyone gets to rip into him, its me, but Emma doesn’t deserve that. Leave them be, I’m the one with superpowers.”

That seemed to calm him down.

I took a seat next to him on the sofa. “Sunday, I ran into a group of teenage villains. They took out Lung for me, but I very likely saved them from being attacked by the full force of the ABB, and subsequently killed.”

Dad looked askance, remembering. “The Massacre?”

I nodded. “They got into contact with me, said they wanted to repay the favor. I met with them today, for a chat.”

The implications sunk in and Dad buried his face in his hands. “Taylor, tell me you didn’t…”

“Dad, I can’t join the Wards. Not in good faith,” I said. “I’d end up doing more harm than good — if I’m right, the whole system is corrupt!”

“Still!” Dad said, raising his voice. “Then you work to change it from within!”

The words of a unionist. Dad was a good man. Righteous, law-abiding, altruistic. He’d been using the legal system, getting on the good side of government officials…

I had no such experience, and I didn’t trust myself not to go into it with gusto regardless. Superhuman intellect aside, I could only read so fast, only talk to so many people at once, only read so many body language cues at a time, and only evaluate so many strategies.

“Dad, I don’t think you understand — I’m smarter than everyone now. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to make mistakes. It means whatever mistakes I make are going to be bigger. If I go in, butting heads with the organization that keeps law and order?

“The system is corrupt, and I would have to tear it down to build a new one, and in the meantime, who is going to catch the bad guys?!”

With one hand, I withdrew the lunch box from my backpack and put it on the coffee table. “There’s more,” I said. Dad looked at the box.

“They are a small group of villains, and they do heists. Nobody gets hurt if they don’t do anything stupid, no harm, no foul. They don’t fight the heroes — in, smash, grab, out. That’s their MO.

“But they aren’t together because they had a great idea to be a team. Someone made them that way. Got them together on purpose.”

I opened the lunch box.

“Someone, who is willing to pay five teenagers two thousand dollars every month, to rob casinos for him. He doesn’t even take a cut. Who does that!?”

Dad looked at the money in the box, and I could see the conflict in his face.

“So, my plan is: I’m going to join them, I’m going to find out who this mystery man is, and I’m going to turn myself in and tell them everything I know. Plead guilty, get a plea bargain, try to get a plea bargain for the other guys too.

“I’m an infinitely better person than Sophia, and she did it on manslaughter charges. The way these guys play it? The worst I’ll be facing is assault and robbery,

“In the end, I get experience, a shady villain gets locked up, and the heroes gain one to five competent reformed capes.

“It’s an undercover operation, except without the undercover bit.”


	17. XIV

Dad sat there in silence for a while, after I finished my pitch.

“No,” he said.

“No?” I said. What?

“You’re going to take this money, give it back to them, apologize for the inconvenience, and then you’re going to join the Wards.”

I stared at him. For all I could tell, I had made a convincing case. And truth be told? I didn’t want to build a personality profile on Dad, I didn’t want to have to manipulate him like some pawn.

He was my Dad. He deserved to know the truth, after all we had been through. After all I had put him through.

But he seemingly didn’t realize how much I couldn’t do that. I had thought through the scenario twice already: I would join the Wards, butt heads with the PRT management, call in my goodwill from the Protectorate heroes for Lung’s capture… Within very little time I would have a sitting director whom I could manipulate.

As soon as I was close to someone in power, any mistake I made could cause a lot of damage. I didn’t trust myself not to fuck up. I stood.

“I refuse,” I said.

“Taylor Hebert,” Dad said, raising his voice. “I’m not going to let you join a gang of criminals! I’m not gonna let you be one yourself!”

“Dad, did Mom really get out of Lustrum’s gang before the violence started?”

He might as well have said ‘no.’

“And let me ask you — were you ever in a gang before you worked for the Union?”

Yes to that as well.

“So why is it then, that the two of you joined gangs for all the reasons people usually do, but I can’t do it to expose a secretive supervillain mastermind? That’s the best reason! Do you really think you’re that important? That what you want matters that much?

“You want me to play it safe, and risk destabilizing the PRT, the only thing that can keep a full blown gang war in check? Are you aware of how many people might die? Just because you already lost Mom?

“Hell, I don’t even matter that much, and I’m the one with superpowers here! And do I need to remind you how much we need two thousand dollars per month!?”

I saw his arm move. His palm connected with my cheek. I could have dodged it with ease. I’d seen it in his body language, I’d know it intellectually, but emotionally? I’d only registered just how much I had done to him just now.

My empathy needed urgent revision, and it needed it right now.

As the moment of silence stretched into seconds, I saw the dawning look of horror on his face. If I didn’t jar him out of it now, this could affect him way too much in the long run.

I landed a quick jab in his stomach. Not as hard as I had punched Rachel, but hard enough that it would sting. Dad stumbled and fell onto the sofa.

“I’m gonna make tea, and then we are going to resolve this as reasonable adults,” I said.

* * *

I returned with a pot of tea and two cups. Dad was sitting where I had left him, looking like he hated himself. Silently, I poured him a cup, and sat down in a chair across from him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “And I can see you’re sorry too.”

He looked at me with pained eyes.

“We’re both scared,” I said. “You’re scared you’re gonna lose me.

“I’m scared of what I might do to people. Or to the world. I’d say it keeps me up at night, but… I’m only fifteen.

“And yeah, I could join the Wards, and keep my tongue tied, and be a small-time hero. But I know I’m not gonna. I’m gonna do something clever, and if I fuck it up, the heroes are going to be weaker for it — that’s a risk I can’t take right now.”

I reached for the teapot to pour myself a cup of tea, but Dad reached forwards and put his hand on mine. “Kiddo… What’s the real reason? All this — you’ve thought it out quite thoroughly, but… What do you feel? What do you want?”

With a thought, I stopped directing my emotions, and felt the remorse and conflict rise in me.

“They’re nice, dad,” I said.

For all I could manage my emotions, for all I was in perfect control of myself at all times, there were times where I didn’t want to be. When we had eaten together — I’d felt like I’d been among people who appreciated me. Peers.

For a year and a half, I’d been ostracized for no reason, and the scars bore deep. So deep, that removing them would make me… Not me. More than I could tolerate, for now at least.

I knew for a fact that I could find camaraderie in the Wards. Anything else would be extremely unlikely. But most of all, I wanted to help them, right now. I wanted to help Lisa and Brian and Alec and Rachel.

Alec was on the run, likely from an abusive home; but there was more to it than that. Rachel was a fugitive from the law. Lisa was… There was some coercion involved between her and the boss. Brian just wanted the best for his sister.

The heroes helped the little guy, the common citizen. Who was there to help the villains? And why did I feel like it was my responsibility?

“They are really nice, and they’re in some bad shit, and it’s not their fault. I want to help them. I want to be their friend, because they could use a friend like me.” A tear rolled down my cheek. “I don’t wanna be a hero if Sophia could be one. They don’t deserve me.”

“OK, kiddo,” Dad said and caressed the back of my hand. “OK.”

* * *

Dad went to bed, and I went to work, on figuring out how my empathy had suffered such a catastrophic failure. It was quite simple, really. I was a fifteen year old girl, and my brain showed it. It would not be simple to fix, though.


	18. XV

Tuesday was dull in comparison. Not that I let it affect me: with a bit of glandular neurochemistry, experiencing boredom was impossible — even the blandest, most trivial school work could hold my attention.

At lunch in the cafeteria, I exchanged glances with Emma. She hesitated, unsure of whether to approach. I gave her a subtle thumbs-up, a small smile, and headed in the other direction. If she needed time, she could have it. I was in no hurry, and it wasn’t very important anyway.

My cell vibrated in my pocket.

Lisa had advised me to get rid of the burner I had used on my first night out. They had an old microwave oven handy for that. Then she had handed me a rather study-looking replacement, and a trendy-like flip-phone for civilian use.

> 
>         I've got us concert tickets.
>       

From Lisa. It was code: she had a job for us. If there was a time that warranted skipping school, this was probably it. Fortunately, I had a petty good way of getting permission: with full somatic control, I could induce fever, pallor, shakes, pupillary responses, clammy sweat, vomiting…

“I think I ate something that didn’t agree with me,” was a good excuse. My math teacher brought it, send me to the nurse. I threw up in the bathroom adjacent to his office.

* * *

“No, this is such a bad idea, we discussed this last time.”

The five of us sat around the dining table. The hideout — ‘The Loft’ as it was called — was still as filthy as ever. At least the dogs were thoroughly housebroken.

“Enlighten the new girl,” I said.

Lisa was grinning like a maniac while Brian exposited.

For all it was a rite of passage for dastardly criminals, robbing banks was in and off itself not a very profitable trade. Banks didn’t have a lot of cash on hand — enough to meet demand, not enough to make their insurance company nervous. The payout, even for a successful heist would be around twice our monthly salary, after splitting five ways.

Further, the probability of meeting superpowered resistance was roughly one. There would be heroes on the scene, they would come quickly, they would come in force. For all the Undersiders’ getaway skills, it seemed to me unlikely that they would give the Protectorate the slip.

And even further, attacking a bank during business hours practically spelled ‘hostage situation.’

When wanting to rob a bank, one also had to answer the obvious question of ‘why not just rob the money transport?’ Money transports had no vaults, no customers, and considerably more money. In Brockton Bay, they also always had cape escorts — meaning it would be a fight from the get-go, instead of there begin a grace period of response time.

Lastly, robbing a bank required preparation, equipment, and effort on a scale that was hard to justify given these downsides. I imagined trying to keep a mob of hostages under control with two lengths of pipe.

I looked at Lisa. “So, what do you know that Brian doesn’t?”

Lisa had been on the phone with the boss all morning, hashing out the deal. The bank job had been her idea; and the negotiations had ended favorably.

To address the issue of the low payout, the Boss would straight up pay us: two dollars for every one we stole, or enough to put us into twenty-five thousand in all. He would also buy any securities, derivatives, bonds, deeds and anything else we could get our hands on.

So at the very least we were walking away with five grand each.

“That’s insane — why would he do that?” Brian asked.

To address the issue of risk, the Boss had given the time: early on Thursday. The Protectorate would be across town, occupied at a fund-raiser. Lisa had then chosen the venue, which was — oh, nothing special — the largest bank downtown: Brockton Central.

Brockton Central was a favorable venue, since it lay a few minutes from Arcadia. This meant that New Wave probably wouldn’t bother us, since the Wards had ‘jurisdiction.’ So we would be facing teenagers — a more level playing field.

The thing about the Wards was that they all went to the same school (now that the Winslow Ward was gone — courtesy of yours truly,) and that meant people were on the lookout for them. If they all slipped away when some emergency arose, people would catch on quickly. Hence, we would most likely be facing half of the Wards team — the more dangerous half, but still, we now had the numerical advantage.

Lastly, concerning equipment and preparation, we had gotten carte blanché. If it had been only that, I would almost have said yes.

There was a moment of stunned silence. I looked around and knew the way the vote would fall — Alec, Bitch, Lisa for, Brian swing.

“What’s his angle?” I said, steepling my fingers for dramatic effect.

Lisa looked at me.

“The Boss man,” I continued. “Lisa, you said the bank was your idea, but the time wasn’t. And from the looks of it he has an overwhelming benefit to reap — otherwise he wouldn’t give us so favorable terms.”

“Yeah, I know. I don’t know — yet,” she admitted.

“You know who he is,” I stated. “If you feel there’s anything sinister going on… This whole deal has me worried for us.”

It could very well be a set-up. The boss could be using this as an opportunity to get us to fuck up and get captured: lure us into recklessness and drop an anonymous tip to the heroes.

Brian looked at me, quizzically. I met his gaze. “What?” I said.

“I’m flattered by your concern,” he said with a wry smirk.


	19. XVI

I went completely overboard.

My costume had been shitty, and the perfect opportunity to amend this had just dumped into my lap. Lisa hooked me up with a contact, and I spent an hour with a borrowed laptop, texting back and forth with some acquisitions liaison in the employ of our shadowy benefactor.

The first thing I got, was a deal: I would over-order, then send back what I didn’t need. With only two days to prepare, I wouldn’t have time to iterate.

My old outfit, meticulously put together for personal protection, had the right idea, but with money I could get something that would save my life.

I requisitioned an army-grade ballistics vest — stab proof, fragmentation proof, and with genuinely bullet-stopping plate inserts and every extra protection available, arm protectors, leg protectors, neck protector, shoulder pads, hip guards, diaper-shaped pelvic protector, steel toed boots with puncture-proof soles, padded fingerless protective gloves made for punching. Most importantly, a real Kevlar helmet capable of stopping a bullet. Full riot gear. I found a convenient face-guard helmet attachment, which would make it easy to conceal my identity.

Then, on second thought, perhaps heavy armor wouldn’t be my style. I ordered an extra helmet, a lighter ballistics vest without the plate inserts. It wouldn’t stop a rifle bullet, but it would stop pretty much anything else.

But armor couldn’t be worn against bare skin, and I didn’t have much in the way of clothes that could be worn under body armor. That led me to a selection of battledress uniforms, coveralls, and catsuits.

And on the third hand, I also needed a non-combat suit. My contact was happy to order things from regular online stores too. A paint ball mask, a shirt with striped sleeves, cargo pants,

And holsters. Lots of holsters and belt pouches and belts and bandoliers. Gas masks of various shapes and sizes.

Then I realized I needed a nice and mobile place to keep my arsenal, and ordered aluminum transport cases on wheels.

There were more things I needed still; things specific to robbing banks, things that had uses outside of violence. I called dad to tell him I’d be home late.

* * *

“Question,” I said. We had ordered Mexican, and rallied in the kitchen.

“Go ahead,” Brian said.

“So, I’m sitting here —” I waved the burner phone “— and ordering up all this neat gear. Why aren’t you?”

“Um… We already have costumes,” Alec said.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I mean, this is a perfect time to upgrade!”

They looked at each other. “It seems you have us at a disadvantage — or at least the others,” Lisa said. “What do you have in mind?”

I pointed at Brian. “You wreath yourself in darkness, right? That obscures your form. There’s no reason for you not to wear a ballistics vest. Not to mention a military-grade helmet. And carry a big pepper spray to spray people with after you get them in your darkness.”

Brian looked at me. “That — it sounds like a good idea, but…”

“But what?”

“I feel it would send the wrong message,” he said.

I let my eyebrows rise. “And you would rather stay on message than die?”

“Hey now—” he said.

Lisa interrupted him. “Taylor, let me disabuse you of several notions. Survival is dependent on message. If we send the message that we are hard-core, our enemies won’t hold back as much. And that will get us killed. No heavy-hitters, remember?”

I mulled on this.

Lisa continued: “It’s a game-theory thing; you know game theory, right?”

I knew game theory well enough to solve the first exercise of the second chapter in a textbook. At least, I knew the terms. I nodded.

“If we all — heroes and villains — stay our ground and don’t use lethal weapons, we have an implicit agreement. If you start bringing an arsenal onto the battlefield… People will lash out. A gun is a message.”

I chewed in silence, thinking about the implications. “I’m still gonna arm myself to the teeth.”

“Well, we’re not gonna tell you how to live your life,” Brian said.

* * *

I ordered an arsenal of mêlée and nonlethal weapons on the spot: extendible batons of every variety and size; a wide selection of combat knives; stun guns in every size between pocket, brick sized, and baton; taser guns; and pepper sprays from tiny to bear-repellents. That was the easy part.

Another easy part was what to put in my grenade bandolier — it would be cumbersome to carry more than one. Smoke grenades, flash bangs, teargas.

Forming an informed opinion about firearms too all evening doing nothing but researching. Revolvers, semi-automatics, submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns. Handgun calibers, rifle calibers, buckshot, anti-materiel calibers. Barrel lengths, muzzle velocity, accuracy, penetration, recoil, stopping power. Popular models, obscure models, popular munitions, obscure munitions.

Essentially, fast bullets were better than slow bullets, since kinetic energy increases with the square of the speed. Light cartridges were better than heavy ones, since bullets were heavy and more bullets meant not running out of ammo. Bullpub rifle layout was superior, since it meant longer barrels in shorter weapons. Modern guns were better than old models, since it meant better materials and the possibility of Tinkertech-derived functionality. Parallax-free optical sights were strictly superior to iron-sights.

After some deliberation, and asking my contact to put me in touch with some mercenary for some advice, I settled first on calibers. NATO, for all it still had relevance, had spearheaded standardization of ammunition, as well as development of new types. They were all in metric, obviously converted from imperial.

This was also when I found my cape name. A quick search verified it: no one across the world had in fact taken the name Para Bellum. Preparing for war. It was fitting.

I ordered sub-machine guns, pistols, an assault rifle, a sniper-rifle, and ammo of every variety. I ordered two shotguns, one short and one long, and riot control ammo — beanbags and rubber bullets.

When I felt satisfied, I started ordering tools — from the stuff one might find in an electrician’s toolbox, over locksmith, to things like dentist mirrors for looking around corners. Gaffer tape, fishing line, paracord, ball bearings, zip ties, silicone lubricant, and super glue.

The last thing I texted to my contact, just before midnight — I’d gotten neither name nor gender; just a phone number and a string of polite texts back and forth — was:

> 
>         that will be all
>     sorry for the huge list of stuff
>     thanks a lot
>       

No sense in not making friends.


	20. XVII

Alec was the only one awake when I left the Loft. Dad was asleep when I came home. I quietly began my homework.

There was a lot of things which I desperately needed, and which I could probably not acquire before Thursday. Like marksmanship ability and some close quarters combat skills. Maybe some squad tactics, and some actual experience in collaborating with the others.

Morning came, and I made breakfast for myself and Dad. He lumbered down the stairs at his usual pace, to the wonderful smell of fresh coffee and pancakes.

“What were you up to yesterday?” He asked me, once he had deemed himself awake enough.

“Getting a new costume,” I said.

“That’s good?”

I nodded. “Real bulletproof vest, lots of protective gear, actual weapons…”

Dad’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Like… Guns?”

“Well—” I said, sitting down across from him with my own plate. “Also tasers, stun guns, batons, pepper sprays… The non-lethal stuff. I’m not going to shoot anyone who aren’t bulletproof.”

He thought that over for a beat, then was seemingly relieved. “Well, I guess that’s something.”

* * *

I skipped school with the excuse that I was sick.

The gear I had ordered arrived under the guise of a moving truck — perhaps not the best cover, but Lisa assured me most people didn’t look twice, even though a moving truck was unloading into an empty brick factory.

Unpacking, assembling, cataloguing and repacking it all took almost two hours. I painted stripes on the arm protectors, battledress jacket sleeves, and coverall sleeves; and stenciled stars on knee-pads. Instead of going with a blue helmet, the coverall and battledress was dark blue. I had a red cloth to tie around my bandolier or something — scarves were a choking hazard.

By the end, I had three aluminum crates on wheels, neatly containing my arsenal.

“You ought to have a room, if only for all that,” Brian gestured to the three crates. I had been obliging enough to wheel them into a corner, but it still took up a good bit of space.

“It’s probably not going to keep on being this much,” I said. “I’ll try out some stuff, see what works for me. Speaking of, do you know anything about fighting?”

* * *

From the storage close, Brian fetched two training mats, and I helped him spread it over the floor. He also fetched a punching bag — for punching full force.

Lisa moved into the kitchen, for some semblance of peace and calm to do her planning work, leaving the two of us alone. Alec was presumably sleeping in, Rachel was out.

“I do some boxing, but I’m not particularly excellent,” Brian said. “Take a stance.”

I lowered my center of gravity a little, putting my weight on the balls of my feet, turned my side to him, and brought my arms up to guard against blows.

“That’s good — where did you learn that?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “Part of my power is excellent body-awareness. It’s not far from that to figuring out how to keep your balance. The face and upper body is the most vulnerable, so I need to defend against blows. Turning my side to you makes a smaller target and gives me more options in terms of punches and kicks, I guess.”

Demonstrating, I made a quick jab in the air with my foremost hand — back in the day, that would have been my left, but nowadays I was ambidextrous — and then a longer-traveling punch with my left hand. Then I made a quick, low heel-kick with my right leg, and a longer, sweeping kick at hip-height with my left.

“Let me stop you right there and say you have really good form,” Brian said. “It seems you already know how to throw punches and kicks — I’ve seen amateurs, and you’re not one of them.”

“Oh,” I said and blushed a little. “Thanks.”

“If anything, I think you should just figure out the basics yourself, maybe find a real teacher after Thursday,” he said. “But I can give you a few pointers.”

Brian did not have super strength. His fighting style relied on the misdirection and situational advantage his darkness provided, and he wore sap-gloves as a part of his costume.

The thing to do in a fist-fight, it seemed, was to overwhelm the opponent — something I could have figured out myself. I made a mental note to find and expunge the last of these areas of learned helplessness. Much as I had dropped an AC on Lung, it was all about getting the opening blow, and keeping up the pressure.

Brian had never pursued martial arts in depth, and with good reason. In a world where people like Alexandria existed, it was a waste of hope to think an ordinary well-trained guy could stand a chance in close-quarters. I was one of the rare few, who could have some use in martial arts classes.

In the end it turned out there was something Brian could teach me: grapples and joint locks. With my enhanced strength, I would be able to disable people hard and fast — sprain, dislocate, and break bones. He showed me a few to let me try the effects on my own body. Even with my enhanced strength, an arm-lock was impossible to break without trickery.

We finished with a no-holds-barred spar, that went in my favor. I reacted faster than him, had better footwork, and I managed a few good body shots which I calculated were powerful enough to sting, but not hurt. Then Brian caught me in a grapple, utilized his fifty pound-weight advantage and pinned me to the mat with a knee to my side, and his hand with the weight of his upper body behind it pushing down on my shoulder and upper arm.

No way for me to land a hit on him.

“I guess that’s another lesson for you,” he said. “You’re not a heavy-weight, so take care when people start grappling, or you might get tossed around.”

In a last-ditch-effort, I grabbed his wrist, pulling it, and twisted myself onto his back. He lost his balance and fell on top of me. He managed to maintain on top of the situation, but ended up straddling me as a result — a good position to rain some blows on my face, much as Sophia had. I pushed that thought out of my mind and focused on the now.

Brian was sitting across my torso, one of my arms pinned under his thigh, while he pinned my free wrist to the mat with one hand. He was smiling. “Nice trick, but that’s not going to work.”

Humans had a second olfactory bulb, which is entirely vestigial, along with a series of non-coding genes for its receptors. In an attempt to carve out a social advantage, I had rebuilt it, grown the receptors, and connected it to my olfactory center. In addition, I could detect just about any chemical alteration in my body, and even without my power, any mood-alteration from external factors stood out. In short, I had the ability to gather a lot of things about people by smelling them.

Up close, and after a light workout, his bouquet was quite pleasant. I almost wanted to laugh in delight.

Brian liked me — as a friend. Getting rid of Shadow Stalker had piqued his curiosity, and my friendly demeanor and smarts impressed him. He was wary, seeing as I was still the ‘new girl,’ but depending on how the bank robbery was going to unfold, I stood to earn his trust.

I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t find him attractive. Kind, witty, athletic good looks, and a winning smile.

Anything but subtly, I nudged my metabolism into upping my pheromone output. “Is this how rough you usually are with girls you meet?” I quipped with a wry smirk.

Brian grinned, too quick on the uptake to get flustered — or so it would seem to anyone who didn’t catch the microexpression of surprise, the faint blush and the pupil dilation.


	21. XVIII

While I kept busy arming myself and thinking about what was going to go down on Thursday, I wasn’t so busy that I did not notice what the others were doing to prepare. Lisa in particular— seeing her work gave me a healthy amount of respect.

I was smart, I spotted things other people didn’t, my conclusions were usually solid.

Lisa pulled facts out of thin air. There was no other way to put it.

On Tuesday, as we discussed the ins and outs of the operation, she had produced a map of the bank from an aerial photograph — drawing on top of it in a paint program. From a single picture of the bank manager at his desk, she had marked where the manager desk was. Then, she had marked the location of all security cameras in the building, then the teller counters, the vault, the vault doors, the enclosed room that held the safety-deposit boxes…

I helped Brian pack up the mats, and Alec emerged from his room looking like a zombie. I wondered what he would have said if he had been witness to my — let’s face it, it was a pick-up line.

To give Brian some space I went into the kitchen to watch Lisa work. She was doing something involved on a laptop — if I were to hazard a guess, some form of hacking. “What are you doing?” I asked and pulled up a chair.

She looked at me for a beat. “You’re not a computer illiterate,” she stated.

She explained how she was executing a ‘phishing’ operation: she had scraped the bank web site for e-mails and deduced the private, internal ones. From there and an employee listing she had picked the most likely targets — the most gullible employees.

She had figured out the software they were using — office packages and the like — the versions of these, and the security vulnerabilities in them. Then with the aid of freely available pre-made hacking tools, she had made a virus embedded in an official-looking document, which she was now writing.

Once it was done, she would mail it to the gullible schmucks under a spoofed e-mail address, they would open it, and it would activate, giving Lisa a controllable proxy on their machines which could very quickly gain administrative privileges.

“My power lets me deduce most things, but sometimes it’s less strenuous to find out stuff the regular way,” she explained. “If I wanted to, I could just figure out their passwords.”

Strenuous? “Is there a limit to how much you can use your power?” I asked.

“Yeah, and I get migraines if I over-use,” she replied, not taking her eyes off the screen.

I nodded. “You’re pretty good at this.”

She smiled. Lisa was easy to please — she was a little more narcissistic than what most would deem virtuous. Every time you complimented her skills or expressed disbelief in her abilities, she glowed a little bit.

“Would it surprise you to know that I’ve also thoroughly compromised the PRT?” she asked me.

When you thought about it, it was not at all surprising that she had done it. Perhaps it was impressive that she had managed it. “A little,” I said, purposefully understating.

“By the by, Lung? He’s pretty much in a vegetative state as of today — I’ve been keeping tabs on his development,” she said. “It’s better than Monday, when he was in a deep coma.”

That was startling. Didn’t Lung have a healing factor.

“He does,” Lisa said, answering my unspoken question verbatim. “But it didn’t protect him from the massive aneurysm you gave him, and I guess the PRT boys thought so too, because they didn’t MRI his head before his breathing stopped.

“My guess? It’s gonna be a good while before Lung even starts speaking, walking, or feeding himself again. So congratulations to you, Taylor. You’ve done what no-one else has managed.”

I thought on that and went to check the fridge for an after-workout snack. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my so-far only act of heroism.

“Hey,” Lisa said. “Lung was positively a horrible human being. He deserves whatever is coming to him.”

“I’m just worried that it’ll become an MO,” I said, sitting down again with a glass of milk. “Resolving to excessive force.”

Lisa took a second to look me over. “Christ, you’re a good person — it’s painful to watch.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said, “but isn’t it the point that nobody gets hurt tomorrow?”

Lisa reached out and poked me on the forehead. “You’re smart, Taylor. You brought a fucking arsenal of non-lethal weapons — if you step up on full riot gear with a pistol on your hip, nobody is gonna dare do anything, you know?

“The way you put your costume together — admittedly you haven’t show it off, but still — basically screams ‘don’t mess with me, I am not afraid to hurt you’

“Why doesn’t it occur to you to take into consideration the sheer aura of intimidation you can project when you’re armed to the teeth? It basically screams ‘combat Thinker-Brute.’

“Quit moping and think.”

She had a point. I was neglecting to take a lot of things into account — another… Blind-spot? My empathy was maturing rather nicely, but perhaps my understanding of human interaction was wonky.

No, not perhaps. Definitely.

“I think I need to do some research,” I said.

On Lisa’s face, I caught an imperceptible hint of confusion, then suspicion. “Don’t worry, I still feel like I’m a talentless hack some days.”


	22. XIX

I arrived at the library an hour and a half before closing time, with my head so full of thoughts it might burst. On the bottom of my backpack lay a dark blue balaclava, a black shirt with striped sleeves, a stab vest, cargo-pants, a red scarf, and a pair of knee-pads where one had a star stencil. The only weapons I had with me were a pair of knuckledusters.

That was going to be the norm — always carrying around my light costume.

I had doubts I didn’t want to squash, about whether villainy was right for me. Brian and Lisa were quickly becoming my good friends… Alec was unobtrusive and funny, Rachel I had pegged as ‘silent respect.’

Tomorrow I was robbing a bank. Knowing Dewey Decimal by heart, I headed for the shelves with sociology literature. A single term — a research keyword — Lisa had given me, was at the forefront of my mind as I paged through tables of content. Signalling.

Once I had a decent few candidates — all of them basic textbooks — I headed for psychology, looking for developmental psych textbooks, and anything about cognitive biases. Constant vigilance for new ways my improved brain could cough up systematic stupidity had to become my second nature if I was to get anywhere.

I was doubting myself — which was good — but in non-constructive ways. Doubting my ability to manage others. Had I really become so confident in my ability to control situations? I had hardly even been in one!

When did I start doubting the intelligence of regular people? You didn’t defy armed villains — even I wasn’t confident I could take on an alert and armed professional soldier without a really good plan.

Not having an adult’s empathy was really starting to grate. Good thing I had caught it in time, to let it grow in and mature before getting myself into something worse than small-time villainy.

Walking home, I had an impulse: to go see Emma, and tell her. Tell her that I was a cape. But that would be detrimental to her. She would fall into old patterns from her time with Sophia, and no amount of words or action from me could change it. Hell, she might feel guilty for causing my trigger event.

She needed to be set on the path of healing before I could swear her to secrecy. Her track record on that account was good, though.

Why did I feel the need to share, even? Could I trust Dad not to rat me out? Did I want him not to?

* * *

I regretted turning on emotional Cruise Control that night. Didn’t have it in me to be emotionally honest around Dad. He didn’t notice, which was both thrilling, but also stung a little in some small irrational part of my mind.

Once again I skipped school, and made my way to the loft just before rain started pouring.

I spent the hours before the storm reviewing captured footage of the Brockton Bay wards, and donned my lighter suit of body armor — helmet, vest, kneepads, elbow pads.

A decent-sized suppressed nine-millimetre pistol for a sidearm, two spare magazines, a shotgun, two dozen assorted rubber buckshot and bean-bag shells. Two batons, as long as my arms, two knives, long as my forearms, a beefy stun gun, a bear-repellent pepper spray, smoke grenades and flashbangs.

Stripes up the sleeves and on my mêlée weapons, star on one knee and same boot, blue coverall underneath, and a red handkerchief tied to my vest’s shoulder-strap.

A first-aid kit would most likely be dead weight, and Lisa insisted she didn’t need me to carry any tools. I did so anyway — a satchel of useful knickknacks.

We had requisitioned two vehicles for transportation. One was a mid-sized truck, wherein Bitch would work her power on the dogs slowly, so as to not tire herself out. The other was a small car — Lisa and I drove that one.

I looked out the window at the passing buildings in the rain. Traffic wasn’t so bad.

“Stage fright?” She asked me.

“No,” I said. There wasn’t an ounce of worry in me. A sense that I ought to be worried? Yes. Actual worry? No.

“Think of it as a game.”

I turned to look at her, uncomprehending.

“A high-stakes variant of cops and robbers,” she continued.

“Full-contact, too,” I quipped, then admitted: “I don’t follow.”

“Grown adults running around in costume, making up codenames for themselves? It’s ridiculous and we know it — even if we don’t admit it out loud.”

“So,” I said. “Wait, there’s an unspoken agreement between villains and heroes, or something? Is that what you’re saying?”

Lisa nodded. “Tell me, why don’t people like Über and Leet end up in the birdcage?”

The answer was obvious, and I was thinking the analogy to end even as I answered: “They’re small fries. So long as they are active as dastardly criminals, it legitimizes the heroes without endangering anyone.

“Meanwhile, the worse get sent off to the birdcage — like Lung, but the PRT don’t go after their civilian lives…”

Lisa grinned. “You’re a fast learner, young padawan.”

I cringed at the dated movie reference, earning a chuckle from Lisa.

“And— the downright dangerous stuff, we team up against. If there was real animosity that wouldn’t happen,” I continued.

“Got it in one. It’s a game. So long as nobody gets hurt? We’re not going to be facing much trouble.”


	23. XX

We stopped in front of the Bank. A large art-deco building, constructed sometime in the early zeroes.

Two floors, dozens of employees, and potentially several tens of thousands of dollars for us.

I stepped out of the car into the drizzle, and watched Lisa do the same. The plates of the car and truck were stolen, and both were rusted, cheap, wrecks. We would leave them here, for good.

The dogs — led by Rachel. No, led by Bitch, now the size of small horses, already beginning to exhibit bony protrusions, jumped down from the truck, showing just how much the suspension had suffered during the trip.

“Let’s get out of the rain,” Lisa— Tattletale said. She led us down an adjacent alleyway, to a side-entrance into the bank building.

As it turned out, SWAT teams had special key-codes to gain entry through such doors, but it wasn’t widely known. Of course, that meant nothing to Tattletale. She punched in a few numbers, then awkwardly pressed asterisk, hash, and some sort of button on the underside. The door clicked open, and I saw just why Lisa had been Brian’s favorite. Tattletale, Grue.

We went in, and began making our way through the office hallway. Grue would fill rooms on the right with darkness, then subdue. I had to rely on more overt intimidation. I’d equipped my pistol with a sturdy suppressor, and I carried a silicone lubricant to wet it. A wet suppressor almost made the shots silent, should I need to fire.

Regent and I took the other rooms. He would make people fumble, I waved a gun around.

Like that, we made our way towards the lobby, accumulating thirteen hostages along the way. It was a virtual certainty that the silent alarm had already been tripped by the end of it.

Then with a wave of darkness rolling over the floor, we stepped into the lobby.

“This is a robbery,” I said, calmly, with my shotgun held at waist height.

One of the guards drew his pistol, but fumbled it miserably. “Please don’t make a fuzz,” Regent drawled.

* * *

Whoever had hired the lobby security had selected smart men and women to do so. Faced with five parahumans and three gigantic monsters, none save one put up a fight.

Grue covered the security cameras in blotches of darkness.

Now came the harder part — securing the hostages.

“Hello, everyone,” I said. “We’re the Undersiders, and today we have the honor of being your friendly neighborhood bank robbers. Huddle up over to that side of the room, and have a seat, everyone.”

Tattletale pointed us in the direction of the vault, and went for the manager’s desk herself, armed with one of the security-guards’ guns. The customers began to congregate by the wall furthers from where we had entered.

It was important to have credit where credit was due. “The darkness fellow is Grue, our leader. The blonde is Tattletale, the royalty is Regent, and the butch is Bitch — though some of you may know her as Hellhound.

“I’m Para Bellum, All-American Villain.”

Regent took position by the windows, facing the street, and kept an eye on the customers, ready to intervene if one of them turned out to be stupid.

“Now, we’re not here to hurt anyone, we’re just after the money in the vault. So if none of you try anything stupid, this won’t turn violent at all.”

My eyes darted across the faces in the crowd, and I saw submission and fear… And defiance> A red-headed girl. “You especially, young miss. This puppy,” I hefted the shotgun, “is loaded with bean-bag rounds. They will put you in a world of hurt.”

Tattletale returned, and went for the vault. Bitch followed, but not before ordering one of the dogs to stand guard.

“This here, is a hell-hound,” I said. “They are obedient to a fault, and only bite a little. It’s going to be your guard-dog for the duration of the robbery. While that is pretty scary on it’s own, Grue is also going to make sure you don’t move, talk to one another, or get any funny ideas.

“He will cover you in darkness — it doesn’t hurt, but it does render you blind and deaf, so find a buddy and hold their hand so you don’t panic. I personally promise nothing bad will happen to you.”

I let my gaze sweep across the crowd once more. They weren’t really catching on. “Didn’t you hear me? Find a buddy, hold hands. That’s an order!”

That made them move. As soon as everyone was paired up — some of them making little daisy-chains — I gestured to Grue, and gave them one last remark: “Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go get rich.”

And that concluded my act. Grue plunged the corner of the lobby into darkness.

Regent would stand lookout and hostage guard, Grue, Bitch and myself would load the goods onto the dogs, and Lisa would help keep an eye on the hostages as well, and also do some financial transactions or something. She hadn’t been particularly clear on it, but I didn’t doubt she could do amazing things from the desk of a bank manager.

* * *

Bitch had let the dogs reach almost full size in the minute since our arrival, which put them at horse-sized.

In the vault, Grue started breaking open deposit boxes with a crow-bar, while Bitch and I stuffed duffel bags full of bills. Everything had to go.

Being inside a bank vault was a rare enough occurrence. Robbing it was surreal. And yet, the whole experience was mundane, as soon as the novelty of endless bundles of bills was replaced by the tedium of lifting yet another bag onto the dog.

We packed the first one to maximum capacity, and Bitch sent it back to the lobby, then whistled for another one. By my count, that left the very largest of them unencumbered. That seemed like a tactically sane decision, but I didn’t know enough to contend it if it wasn’t. It seemed like an insignificant amount of weight we were strapping to the dogs in the first place.

“Are we good?” I asked, when Bitch slide the last bag across the floor to me, and I lifted it onto the dog’s harness.

“Spiffy,” Grue said, stuffing bond papers into a bag.

I dug through my bag, and pulled out two water bottles with rubber — . “Thirsty?”

Grue and Bitch both looked up. Grue snorted, but Bitch made a gesture to catch. I tossed her one of them. “I’m gonna check on Tattletale—” I began.

“Don’t,” Grue said. “You’re the brute, here; you do the heavy lifting — if Tt needs help, she’ll let us know.”

It was some pretty heavy lifting — picking duffel bags full of cash off the ground and lifting them to chest height. Even if I only took one at a time, I had to actively keep my core muscles at their peak; making minor tissue repairs as I went.

We lugged another six bags of bonds and securities onto the big spiky monster dog — by my count, the German Shepherd — when Tattletale called us from the lobby.

“Uh, guys, we have a problem!”


	24. XXI

Grue zipped his last bag — half full — and slid it to me. I hooked it onto the dog’s harness. At some point I ought to ask Rachel of their names. The three of us almost ran into the lobby to find Tattletale facing the lobby doors, pressing two fingers to her lips — brow furrowed in confusion and thought.

Regent stood twirling his scepter — perhaps a nervous gesture.

Grue strode up to the windows adjacent to the doors and cast one glance out, before letting darkness cover door and windows. He kept supplying more darkness into the cloud, and it crept out over the front wall, covering windows as it went. As soon as he was done, he turned to us.

“Tattletale, you fucked up,” he said.

“I know,” she replied.

“You really, really fucked up!”

“I know!”

She had predicted we would be up against three, maybe four teenage heroes. It was apparent she had miscalculated. “How many?” I asked.

“All of them,” Grue supplied. “Vista, Aegis, Clockblocker…”

“Kid Win, Gallant, Browbeat, and there’s a seventh one on the roof, but I don’t know who,” Tattletale completed.

I dug through my bag, and found an over-sized dentists’ mirror. From what I could tell, Tattletale’s power worked better with direct observation, and Grue had just blacked out our every vantage point — prudent move too, as someone might be listening in.

Now, if the heroes had a man on the roof, it was logical that said man on the roof would attack through the roof access.

“A suggestion, if I may: Grue, open up a small viewing window,” I said and handed the mirror to Tattletale. “Then go flood the stairwell to the roof access with darkness.

“Our main priority is figuring out who the seventh party is, and why we’re facing twice the manpower we ought to.”

Grue looked at Tattletale, then waved his hand at one of the far windows, opening a small hole in the dark clouds. Tattletale pointed down another hallway. “Roof access is that way.”

“Yes,” Grue said. “I know.” He turned to go.

“Wait,” I said. “Bring a pair of hostages — security guards.” My hand went to my bag, and I withdrew a pair of police-issue zip-cuffs. “Sit them down in the hallway, if they decide to brave the darkness, they’ll stumble over them”

Grue took them, and headed into the darkness. Soon after, the darkness billowed outwards and down a hallway — undoubtedly with him and hostages in it.

Lisa headed to the window, and I looked at Regent and Bitch, standing with the two dogs loaded with bags of cash, the third, largest one, was lying obediently in front of the dark cloud enveloping the hostages.

“OK,” I said. “What did we fail to take into account? Why are we facing down the entire cavalry?”

Regent turned to me, and I’d hazard a guess he was looking at me funny. “You’re asking us?”

I was. External input was always welcome — I had spent some time reviewing footage of the Undersiders’ past heists, and spent some time thinking about the seeming dichotomy of Lisa/Brian and Alec/Rachel. The thought had occurred that Alec and Rachel were just as smart as Lisa or Brian, but in different ways — obvious really. If I were to coin a koan on the spot based on zero evidence, I’d say that a team was only as strong as its dumbest member.

“Someone ratted us out,” Bitch said.

“Who?” I asked.

“You.”

That level of mistrust was expected, and nothing I couldn’t deal with. I turned to Tattletale over by the far window, and raised my voice. “Tt, did I rat us out?”

“No,” she called back.

I continued. “Tt, I told my dad that I’m a villain, from what I can tell, he’s cool with it. Didn’t tell him anything about the bank job. Did he rat us out?”

Tattletale looked directly at me for almost a second. “No. Now quit asking me stupid questions!”

Rachel had crossed her arms.

“But for all you know, I might have,” I said and gave her a thumbs up, “so good call. Regent?”

“Maybe they’re just really pissed off because they lost Shadow Stalker?” he suggested.

“They utterly hated her,” Tattletale called. “She was by no means a team player. Besides, they don’t know anything.”

Alec was smart enough to elide the details. We all knew he had meant to say ‘because of me.’

“So,” I said. “We don’t have a leak, they don’t have a grudge, Tt’s power ought to have eliminated coincidence. Was there something in the vault they want to protect?”

Bitch shrugged. Brian had broken almost all the security deposit boxes open — if there was something, we would have found it. Besides, what would such an item be?

Grue returned.

That left two possibilities. Either they had seen their opportunity to capture us — which was incongruous given our otherwise low-profile, low-casualty count and high rate of escape; or they were here not for something, but for someone. A VIP we had accidentally taken hostage.

“Either they just want to bust us for good,” I said, “or there’s a special hostage. That’s my two cents.”

Tattletale returned in a quick walking pace walking past me, she handed me back the mirror.

“Grue, the hostages,” she said, and the darkness covering the left side of the lobby disappeared, unveiling the thirty-odd people.

“I can’t get a reading on who’s on the roof, but you’re right, they’re here because of someone,” she said.

That made me make a connection — every other hostage had been apprehensive, but one of them had a microexpression of defiant contempt. Which could very well have been because she was expecting to get rescued. “The mousy brunette — teen girl,” I said. “She wasn’t afraid of me.”

“Amy Dallon,” Tattletale said almost immediately. “Panacea.”

The brunette stood up. The worlds greatest healer, the pride of Brockton Bay, the golden child of New Wave. And we had taken her hostage on accident.

No wonder the Wards were out in force.


	25. XXII

“And it’s Glory Girl on the roof,” Tattletale said. “She’s here for her sister.”

There was something in Panacea’s face as Tattletale said that — something more than relief. I filed the microexpression away for future reference.

The first thing I needed was information. Mirror in hand, I ran to Tattletale’s former vantage point to get a look for myself. The mirror quickly grew irritating, so I squatted down to look instead.

Outside, the street itself had come undone. Instead of a straight line of road, there was a semicircular plaza, with the bank in the middle. Around the perimeter, at even intervals, stood the six Wards.

It was admittedly hard to wrap my head around that power: Vista, the youngest Ward, was a powerhouse capable of bending space like pretzels. Connecting far-off points, expanding interstitial distance — if we were to have any chance of escaping, she was a priority target.

Clockblocker would also be a major pain. If he got within touch-range, that was pretty much game-over as any of us would be frozen in place for thirty seconds to ten minutes.

Aegis was an Alexandria package — flight, strength, toughness. The implementation was non-standard, but the effect was the same. He could catch up to us on the dogs and throw us off. Glory Girl was in the same category of problem.

Kid Win also flew, but on a hover-board, and only engaged at range with non-lethals. Regent could make him trip and fall if needed be. Gallant was ground-bound and all he had was a weak ranged attack and some form of empathy-sense — even if the Wards tried to pass him off as a Tinker or something.

Lastly, Browbeat would be problematic if engaged at close range, as he was the heaviest hitter of them all. A good thing he didn’t fly.

All of this I already knew — I only spent about a second scouting before returning. Tattletale and Grue was about to start arguing about what to do next.

“I say we start exchanging hostages,” I said, and pointed to Amy Dallon, standing like a metaphorical barrier between us and the hostages. “Starting with her.”

It seemed like the reasonable thing to do — it would result in a measure of goodwill from the heroes, and we could send Amy Dallon off with a message that we were willing to release more hostages. With myself being a heavily armed wildcard, I could make a credible threat of hostage execution.

“Isn’t that giving up our only significant bargaining chip?” Regent asked.

“It’ll lull them into a false sense of security, that we’re reasonable people,” I said, and drew my pistol from its holster for emphasis. I saw Amy’s eyes widen. “Grue, could you…” I gestured towards the hostages.

He plunged the group into darkness. I holstered the gun. “It will earn goodwill, and we can facilitate further hostage exchanges to stall for time while we figure out a plan of escape,” I said.

“And I suppose you have a plan as well?” Grue asked.

As a matter of fact, I had two. Firstly, the Undersiders’ MO was a smash-grab-escape gambit. In and out quickly, and slippery like slimy eels. Aided by Tattletale’s planning, Grue’s smokescreen, Regent’s ability to interrupt, and Bitch’s dogs’ speed, they were formidable at this. So the natural course of action was to gain the moment of surprise.

The other option hinged on how Vista had decided to set up her fun house.

“Idea number one,” I said. “We do the thing they don’t expect us to: fight. We have the dogs, we have Regent, we have the Darkness, and I am a discount-version of Aegis. As soon as we take Vista out, we book it.”

Vista, we had all agreed during the planning phase, was the most detrimental to an escape.

“Risky,” Grue said. “Could go south fast.”

“We’re strong,” Bitch protested. “We win all the time.”

Grue sighed. “Because we pick our battles.”

“The second option,” I said, “is that we figure out if Vista has warped the back alley. If she hasn’t…” I reached into my satchel for the heaviest thing I was carrying.

A small but powerful electrical hammer drill — connecting with power cord — with a diamond-tipped drill. Hefting it into my other hand, I took out the item that made such a piece of equipment make sense: plastic explosive, already shaped into rubbery rods that would fit in the drill-holes.

And of course, detonating cord and a detonator to set it up.

“We make a door.”

* * *

Tattletale made short work of the pivotal assumption — Vista had only warped the front of the building and the two side alleys. The back wall of the bank was unobstructed; all we needed was to blow the back wall, disable Vista momentarily, then make our escape.

Bitch and Tattletale would locate a fitting stretch of back wall and set the charges, as well as a cranny to take cover in. They brought the two dogs carrying the haul. Grue laid out a sound-dampening thin blanket of darkness to mask the sound of drilling.

He dispersed the darkness covering the hostages. Panacea still stood, and I approached her. She was scared but angry, and I pointed my pistol squarely at her stomach.

Backing me up was Regent, Grue, and a dog-monster the size of a rhino; all bone-spikes and exposed muscle.

“We’re going to release you, and see if it appeases your friends. Tell them this: for every minute they stay put, they get another hostage. —” I counted the hostages. “— Thirty two minutes, and you will have every hostage.”

“Why should I trust you?” Panacea spat back at me.

“Because I’m an All-American hero. Truth, Accountability, Every woman for herself. The cash in this bank was poorly protected, so we took it; but when I give my word, I never take it back,” I said. Utter drivel, but it might convince her I was a fanatic — and if she was smart, she’d deduce I was probably the new leader.

Which I wasn’t — consensus and all — I was just, apparently, the smartest around.

“Also,” I continued. “If your friends get the funny idea of bargain in here before thirty-two minutes are up, I’m going to use this—” in my bandolier, I carried a fake fragmentation grenade: it was just the shell, with no explosives inside. I pulled it out and tossed it in the air casually “— and shoot whoever is left.”

Then I looked her dead in the eye. “Of this, you also have my word. The door is that way,” I said and gestured with the gun.

The doors were large and wooden, but swung both ways. Panacea walked calmly and slowly over to the blacked-out opening and tentatively reached through, making contact with the door. Then she pushed through and disappeared. I immediately ran to the peep-hole window, and this time I used the mirror.

I started a stop-watch I had with me in the bag, and let it count the seconds while I watched.

True to form, Glory Girl dropped out of the sky to make sure her sister was alright. Then Aegis came up, but there was something… Off about it. I could tell even at this distance who was taking turns speaking just from the body language, and Aegis didn’t speak like an experienced leader.

Curiouser and curiouser.


	26. XXIII

We went on with the hostage exchange as planned. One hostage every sixty seconds. I had to separate a four-year old girl from her father, with solemn promises that the two would be reunited in just sixty seconds. Grue would pick out the hostages inside the darkness, and I would send them off.

But more to the point, we now had a rather stark time-limit, and I needed to set up a sufficient distraction for when we left.

“Regent, are you capable of making Vista throw up?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied.

Grue looked at me. “What are you planning?” he asked me.

Instead of answering, I dug out nylon fishing line and gaffer tape from my pack. I removed one of my grenades — a flash-bang — from my bandolier and pulled up a chair. Working quickly, I taped it in place over the door. Grue obligingly cleared up the darkness for me to work. Once it was taped in place, I tied fishing line to the pin.

Then I took a screw eye out of my pack, and quickly drove it into the door frame, then another into the wood of the door. When it was time, the fishing line would loop through one eye and tie to the other, so when the door was opened, it would pull the pin.

A neat little booby-trap.

Then it was time for another hostage, and Grue covered the unarmed trap with darkness. No need to tell the hostages we were trapping the place. Or rather, that we weren’t. Patches of darkness hiding no grenades at all. Grue stood by, waiting, with the stopwatch.

I set up three of those, ready to be tied and covered in darkness, on the way to the vault, and three down the hallway to the place we would be making our exit.

The last one had the fragmentation grenade inside it, and I rigged up a pulley system so that if the tension of the tripwire was released, a weight would pull the pin anyway.

Five minutes had passed. Every two minutes, Alec went past the shadow curtain to check on Tattletale and Bitch.

“We’re running out of time,” I said.

“Yeah, do you think this will be enough?” Grue asked.

“We’ll stage a hostage kill,” I said. “That will make them rush in, and the gunfire will mask the sound of the explosion if there is any, or at least give them something else to think about.

“The ruse will be that the hostages go in the vault, and we leave. Also, you cover the floor in darkness, and I spread ball-bearings all over the floor.”

I took a fat marker from one of the teller’s desks, and wrote a note on the wall above the vault: ‘Hostages in here.’

* * *

There were twenty-one hostages left, and I knew we were stretching it.

Bitch poked her head through the veil of darkness. " Done," she said. The dogs were already down the hall — we would all take cover around a corner, and the biggest dog would bust the wall down some more if we needed it.

I gave the signal to Grue and he uncovered the hostages, then a lot of things happened very quickly.

“All right, everyone!” I yelled, brandishing my shotgun. “Into the vault, now! Go, go, go!” The mass of people started moving. “Run!” I screamed, and they did.

Once all the hostages had passed, I pushed the vault closed. Grue, Regent and myself tied the tripwires, and Grue covered the walls entirely to make it uncertain which one hid the bomb.

With twenty seconds remaining to the clock, Grue uncovered the front doors, flooded the floor, the ran down the hallway to join the others. He had already covered the blast zone in darkness from both sides — there was a small window that provided access, which had enabled him to put a patch of darkness on the back of the building as well.

Most of this had happened by my prompting. I’d spent about six hours thinking up scenarios; none of which was what we had on our hands, but it let me pull on previously established creativity in the heat of the moment. Truth be told, it hinged on Tattletale and Bitch being able to make us an escape through solid concrete.

Tattletale seemed confident.

“Now,” I said to Regent, and he thrust his hand towards the front of the lobby, slowly closing his hand into a fist, as if squeezing something. Then he ran. It would take him four seconds to reach the others, then Tattletale would press the trigger.

I emptied a sizeable bag of ball-bearings onto the darkened floor, giving no sound at all. Then I took out my pistol — now sans suppressor — and fired off six shots as quickly as I could.

Guns were amazingly and astoundingly loud.

One quick glance out the windows showed me Clockblocker and Glory Girl rocketing towards the door. Aegis had been stilted, Clockblocker could fly. They had switched costumes.

Then I ran, deftly jumping the knee-height false tripwires down the hall, rounding the corner into the dusty corridor to see the largest of the dogs ram its way through the crumbling concrete. The visibility was near zero.

Behind me, I heard the telltale boom of the flash-bang.

“Go!” I yelled.

The dogs exited into the alley, and we mounted them as quickly as we could. Bitch and Grue on one, Regent on the smallest, Tattletale and I on the largest. I threw my bag in the wall’s opening — with some luck, they’d think it was a bomb.

Then Bitch whistled, and the Dogs tore through the alleyway, trembling trash containers as they went. It was anything but a smooth ride, and I was glad my vest included a crotch-protecting Kevlar diaper.

* * *

We didn’t get far into the open before we were pursued. As we rode, Grue enveloped the street and side-streets in as much darkness as he could — completely obstructing traffic. The dogs themselves had a top speed approaching forty-five miles an hour, so we didn’t get far before I saw Glory Girl, Aegis in Clockblocker’s costume, and Kid Win approaching.

“Regent!” I yelled to him and pointed. With some effort, I turned myself backwards, lodging my boot under a bone spine, and awkwardly holding on to the chains Bitch fitted her dogs with for handholds. I almost elbowed Tattletale in the back in the process.

Regent lashed out towards the fliers, and I saw Aegis swerve some. Then Glory Girl. Both continued flying. Then Regent turned his power towards Kid Win.

All reasoning went that Kid Win would have some sort of back-up for exactly this situation. I had considered opening fire on him to deter him, but I was still struggling with fitting my suppressor back on one-handed.

But alas, Kid Win was apparently a moron. Had I not controlled myself, a gripping dread would have overcome me when I saw him stumble off his hoverboard some fifty feet in the air and plummet. Fortunately, Aegis was quick on his reflexes and veered off to catch his team mate. Glory Girl continued her pursuit while Aegis deposited Kid Win on the nearest available rooftop.

The suppressor clicked on to the muzzle of my pistol, and I took aim at Glory Girl.


	27. XXIV

I loosened two shots and Glory Girl made an evasive maneuver — odd. Supposedly she had the classic Alexandria package; was she not bullet proof?

Even with a suppressor, the weapon was loud as hell, but not directly ear-damaging.

“Glory Girl isn’t bullet proof?” I yelled over the rush of wind, to Tattletale. I fired another shot, and Regent gestured once more, making her dip for half a second. Aegis was catching up once more.

The telltale beat of Tattletale thinking — or using her power — told me something was up.

“She has a shield,” she said. “Hit it hard enough and it takes fraction of a second to come back on. Makes her strong and fly too!”

Aiming wasn’t all that hard; with the few shots of practice in the bank — I hadn’t just fired mindlessly into the wall — and now with the suppressor, I felt I had a pretty good hang of the weapon.

I took more careful aim, using my power to compensate for the bumpy ride, and shot at Aegis. The third shot hit — if one went by the red mist. He didn’t even slow down.

They were closing in cautiously none-the-less, undoubtedly waiting for us to reach less populated areas where we couldn’t threated pedestrians.

“I’m getting off to fight,” I yelled.

“Don’t!” Tattletale responded.

“I’ll play dead if I lose!”

She mulled that over for a moment.

I could — or so I was pretty sure — make myself almost indistinguishable from a corpse. Humans could already enter protective hypothermia and survive without oxygen for some time. I could theoretically circulate my blood without a heartbeat, and I could cleave carbon-dioxide into oxygen — not to mention a host of other things — if needed be. Simulating the more cosmetic things like rigor mortis was easy as well.

Once they verified I was dead, escaping would be easier, I hoped.

“OK, go for it! Probably no Panacea — won’t get here in time. If she does, write a threat on your bones,” Tattletale said.

My thoughts ground to a halt. She knew about my true power?

“I know,” she said. “We need to talk. Now go! Grue! Cut the darkness!”

Grue stopped pulsing Darkness for mere seconds, and I threw my shotgun down, then jumped off the dog. It was a nasty roll, and the shotgun wouldn’t have made it easier. Behind me, Grue resumed generating darkness.

The first thing I did was re-load my gun, discarding the almost empty magazine and inserting a new one. Standing up, Glory Girl and Aegis landed at the other end of the clearing. The last pedestrians were vacating.

“Surrender,” Aegis said.

I ignored him. “I’m no tougher than a regular human in peak condition, so try to go easy on me, I said.”

“So what?” Glory Girl said. “Even if I break your spine, Panacea can just stitch you back together again.”

Aegis was the most troubling of the two. To disable Glory Girl, all I needed to do was break her shield and spray her.

Glory Girl had an emotion-projection aura, and now I felt the full effect up close. Or rather, observed. In my brain, neurochemicals sprung into existence — conjured from nothing, much like the impulses projected by Regent. Fear. I set my power to cut apart the offending chemicals as they appeared.

“Hey, we gave her up as soon as we realized,” I said, pushing indignance into my voice. “We never intended to take anyone that important hostage!”

“Save it for the DA, you’re going down,” she retorted. Banter was, apparently, an invaluable time-waster.

“One more question,” I said. “Aegis, can you take being shot in the head? I don’t want to accidentally kill you.”

He said nothing. I took that as a yes.

With all the grace of a gunslinger of the old west, I swung my pistol up to aim at Glory Girl. Immediately she rocketed sideways — to her left, towards Aegis. I was holding the gun right-handed, meaning I would have to track across my body. She also intended to use Aegis as a meat-shield.

It didn’t do her much good. At this distance, some thirty-five feet the bullet would cross the distance in two hundredths of a second, and I had anticipated the move, tracking her movement pre-emptively — hand-eye coordinating being so much easier with my power. My gun sang, and the bullet probably grazed her side, but it was enough that her aura faltered — a fact which I noticed before the change in her trajectory.

Aegis, meanwhile, was barreling straight at me. Undeterred, I charged him as well, with a battle-cry. I squeezed off three rounds into his face. His visor cracked, and presumably the bullets dug into his skull. There was a slim hope in me that it would slow him down to have his head full of lead.

Just before we collided, I kicked off with all my might into a jump. High jump athletes could clear bars as high as two metres, and I only needed to dodge his attempt at grappling. With a less-than graceful sideways somersault, I collided with his shoulder.

Aegis reacted quickly, and would have managed to grab my bandolier if I hadn’t elbowed him in the back in passing. The counter-attack almost cost me my balance, and I felt the damage in my ankle as I landed and staggered, but ultimately and continued at speed towards Glory Girl. I saw a shimmer, and the neurochemical effect returned and I shot her again, before she could amass any significant acceleration towards me.

My free hand went to my bandolier for my bear-repellent, and I sent a hazy-brown cloud of acrid mist at her.

Without her shield and strength, she still managed to throw herself to one side and avoid getting it in her face.

Bruce Lee, at the height of his ability, had been able to punch a man from standing in three hundredth of a second. My gunplay was a bit slower than that, but the average human reaction time to recognize a threat and perform a non-instinctive action was seventy-one hundredths of a second.

Another bullet left my gun, and impacted Glory Girl’s shield. Then I followed up with the spray, coating her in a smear of orange oil. Her costume had bare legs, arms, and face, and I made sure to make it count. Then Aegis collided with me from behind.


	28. XXV

I tumbled into a barely-controlled roll, and Aegis followed up with a kick to my side, sending me rolling further, this time with marginally better control. I staggered to my feet and lunged backwards and to the side, to get a clear view of him.

We were close to the clouds of shadow, now, and Aegis was probably worried I’d slip away; because he took some distance, and glided around to cut me off. I took the opportunity to empty my magazine into his chest. He didn’t seem to mind nor care, which was worrying.

Counting the bullets, I knew exactly where I shot empty, and dropped the gun. My hands went to my thighs to draw my two long combat knives instead. Aegis took the opportunity to charge me again, but I stood my ground this time.

He attempted to tackle me. I read his attack with ease, and ducked under it less gracefully than I would have liked — best case scenario would have been if I had the finesse to plunge one of my knives into him as I went. For now, I just didn’t want him to grab on to me.

Which was, perhaps, too much to ask. He wasn’t going near top speed, and was apparently able to turn on a dime this time, slamming himself into me. With his flight, he pushed me into the ground with something like three times his weight. No grapple technique, just sheer pressure; relying on the fact that I was now face-down.

I placed both palms in the ground and pushed. I could bench-press something like five hundred pounds. Gaining a little bit of height, I rolled onto my side, and began stabbing him in the side. The armor panels on Clockblocker’s costume proved difficult to penetrate; and Aegis changed tactics.

He put me in a choke-hold — not that it did him much good other than locking me in place. The collar of my vest and the face-protector of my helmet was all he was pressing against. Glory Girl was starting to get up — only on one eye closed, and probably in a massive amount of pain; but then again, she could stand and probably see, and I wouldn’t put it past her to be able to fight despite the burning agony.

That meant she could make her way over here and punch me.

I took a hold of Aegis’ arm by plunging one of my knives into his bicep, and then plunged the other knife directly into his elbow joint. Then, I withdrew the first knife, and stabbed it into his joint from the exit wound of the other. Then I used the two knives as a scissor, and with a truly horrific sound, I deprived Aegis of his forearm.

“Shit!” he hissed behind me, as I rolled away and got up. Wasting no time, I sprinted away, towards the darkness. I’d cast another glance at Glory Girl, and had a pretty good idea of how she was going to react.

Now that I had no gun, and had gotten to her, she was going to go in for the kill — with sufficient adrenaline, people could do just about anything. True to my expectation, she began accelerating towards me. This time, I made no effort to dodge. She intercepted me at the edge of the darkness, probably moving at something like seventy miles per hour, and clotheslined me in the back.

We plunged into the darkness together, and I let myself go limp.

* * *

Someone found my boot, and dragged me into the light again by my shin. On purpose I had bruised my entire back, and now I was putting myself into respiratory distress and destabilizing my heart rhythm to simulate a hemorrhage in the brain stem.

All the while, I was also putting significant effort into making sure none of this damaged any tissues.

“Bitch’s out cold,” I heard Glory Girl say. “Fucking shit— burns.”

A shadow passed in front of the sun. Glory Girl continued muttering curses and occasionally whimpering.

“Hey!” Aegis said to me. He took my limp hand and pinched my fingertip hard. Then he reached under my helmet and poked me hard in the soft part of my jaw. I was as limp as a dead fish.

“She’s unresponsive,” he concluded. “How hard did you hit her?”

“Not that hard!” Glory Girl protested. “Ow.”

“Stop rubbing it, you’ll make it worse. Help me remove her helmet,” he said. “We may have to perform CPR. You shouldn’t have dragged her out here by her foot.”

“Like I had a choice! It was a wonder I found her in there!” Fumblingly, someone unclasped my helmet strap, and I felt someone lean over me.

“She’s not breathing right,” Aegis said. “Call for Panacea.”

I let my breathing stop, and began the process of compensating for the inevitable lack of oxygen.

“Shit,” he continued. “I think she just stopped breathing.”

Noises of fumbling with something, and a quiet curse from Glory Girl. Aegis began unstrapping my body armor in order to begin CPR.

“Ames?” Glory Girl said. “We fought the armored girl and I hit her too hard — she’s not breathing… OK. Aegis is with me, we’re going to do CPR until you get here.” I noted unusually high vocal stress from her.

“What’s up?” Aegis said.

“They’re trying to get into the vault, but there’s booby traps. They’re thinking the vault door might be rigged on the inside. She wants to stand by in case there’s any of the hostages that are injured,” Glory Girl relayed.

“Fuck, this girl here is dying!” he protested.

“She…” Glory Girl began.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

There was something. If what I now suspected of Glory Girl, personality wise, was true; this was something of a common occurrence for her — hitting people so hard they didn’t get up, and then relying on her sister to stitch them back together.

“Help me remove her armor and give me your damn phone,” Aegis barked.

Glory Girl proceeded to tear the Velcro apart a little too forcefully.

“Panacea? Aegis. How long is it going to take them to defuse the traps? Ask them… OK, You need to get on Kid Win’s hover board and get over here stat. I’m pulling the leader-card here…

“What do you mean ‘she has to deal with her own screw-ups?’ Yeah, I know it’s a damn villain, but this one we actually know is dying — the hostages are probably OK. Look, I don’t give a damn—

“… She hung up.”

Glory Girl had pulled my balaclava up past my mouth and nose, taking care not to uncover my face entirely. She unzipped my coverall, then pulled up my sports bra.

“Damn, this chick is ripped,” Glory Girl noteed.

I forcibly quieted the feeling of embarrassment.

“This is unacceptable behavior of your sister,” Aegis said, with audible contempt in his voice.

From what I could tell, he was real heroic type; and probably hated the situation I had put him in.

“You breath, I pump,” he said. “… One of her shots hit my mouth. And thing of it this way: you can share some of that pepper spray with her.”

Or maybe not.

“Kid Win, do you read me?” Aegis said — probably into his earpiece. “Get an ambulance to our location, and stand by to transport a casualty on your board.”


	29. XXVI

It was seven minutes before the ambulance arrived. I was lifted onto Kid Win’s board, and flown out of the darkness-covered area, then lifted onto a stretcher.

Experienced EMT’s tried their best to resuscitate me — after five defibrillator shocks, and a healthy dose of epinephrine, one of them called time of death, and the driver slowed down. The end-result was microfractures in my sternum, and several muscle tears from the shocks. Still my blood circulated, and I slowed my metabolism further.

I let my extremities cool, in order to conserve energy and began breathing with agonizing to offset the oxygen deprivation. The resuscitation efforts had at least provided me with air. Now came the hard part.

The ambulance pulled over and waited, the two EMT’s stepped out which allowed me to breathe more freely.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, I heard a car pull up.

“Medical Examiner, PRT,” I heard someone say.

“She’s all yours.”

Someone stepped into the ambulance, and walked up to me.

I had studied the signs of death, and I was pretty sure I could fake it — right now, I had ceased capillary activity in my skin, and I was getting ready to let my muscles stiffen — though by a different method than rigor mortis. I was ever so slowly letting blood seep out of my veins under my skin where I lay, as well to simulate postmortem lividity.

The ME took my pulse — absent, checked breathing — which I held, then stuck a thermometer in my liver — which would have been distinctly unpleasant if not for my power.

“When did you call time of death?”

“About fifteen minutes ago. She had been undergoing CPR for seven minutes when we got her. The cause reported was blunt force trauma.”

“The autopsy will confirm.”

The gurney was rolled out and I was put in a body bag and relocated into a van or something. Once again, I could breathe freely.

When we finally came to a stop, I was unloaded like a piece of luggage, onto a hard surface and rolled some distance.

“What is this?” someone said. The body bag was unzipped.

“Villain. Died fighting the Wards in the bank robbery.”

“Put her in the cooler. I’m in the middle of an autopsy.”

* * *

Inside the cooler, I started repairing the damage I had done to myself. It wasn’t much, but it would take an hour before I was working at full capacity again. My heart started pumping, and I drew a deep, almost desperate breath.

While we had been driving to the bank, I had taken several precautions to protect my identity in exactly these circumstances. First, I had changed my skin color — to a casual observe I now appeared to be a light-skinned Mexican. Second, I had scrambled my prints. If anyone had tried to take a blood sample, I would have scrambled the DNA in it as well. Lastly, I had moved my teeth ever so slightly.

Now came the difficult part. Morgues usually did not expect people to try and escape from them, but on the other hand I had no idea where I was, which meant I had to get out of my costume fast.

The person performing my autopsy finally came to fetch me after about thirty minutes. Two sets of hands grabbed me and I was lifted onto a metal table.

Then they unzipped my body bag, and I greeted them by sitting up and taking on of them hostage. A middle-aged Asian woman and a burly, young black man were my coroners this lovely afternoon. I had the woman at the end of my knife.

“I don’t want to hurt any of you,” I said.

“Christ,” she said.

“Don’t call anyone, don’t make any loud noises,” I said.

* * *

These two poor souls were pretty unaccustomed to violence up close. I found some string to tie the big guy up with, and got the lady to guide me to the locker rooms. I Must have been seen by at least two surveillance cameras, but apparently they were not for pre-emptive security.

I stole a fire-plan map off the wall, just before we entered the locker rooms.

In the locker room, I bade her lie down on the floor while I broke open a locker with a baton strike to dent the door, and my bare hands to tear it open. I did the same with another one, which turned out to be empty, and then a third one which wasn’t. I took the clothes in both and stuffed them into a backpack I found in one, along with a pair of shoes. Found some bills in a wallet.

I stripped down to my sports underwear, knife held between my teeth. Then I dressed myself in a hoodie and a pair of jeans, neither of which fit very well.

“Follow me out of here, don’t try anything funny.”

Then we headed for the fire escape. I was almost certain wheels were in motion already, even if the security was lax. I found the door that permitted egress onto an external metal spiral staircase.

The next obstacle for me to clear was the fence. I had been taken to a subsidiary PRT facility. From the looks of the fire map, it only had a morgue, and from the look of my surroundings, it was on the edge of town. It was also circled by a ten feet high chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire that fortunately slanted outwards.

This was probably why the security was lax.

From the backpack, I drew a sturdy canvas jacket.

I turned to the woman.

“You can go untie your assistant, and alert security now. It doesn’t matter how quickly you do either, I will be long gone before any officers can come here,” I said. It wasn’t entirely true, but bluffing couldn’t hurt. She would probably follow protocol anyway.

Then I scaled the fence, using the jacket as protection against the barbed wire. I still cut myself, and landed on the ground on the outside of the fence, and started running.


	30. XXVII

I ducked into the first alley I found to get dressed, and broke down the melanin in my skin, restoring myself to my almost sickly pale default complexion. The key now would be to act casually and change outfits in alleys.

After five minutes or so, I heard sirens in the distance. It was very possible there might be a hero on the scene as well. Unperturbed, I found a bus stop with only a few minutes till the next bus and paid the faire with my stolen cash.

I got off two stops later and continued on foot; found a suitable alley and changed my clothes again.

It was a good thing I had ordered extra gear, since I had basically lost my entire costume at this point.

With the change I had gotten from the bus faire, I found a payphone and dialed Lisa’s number.

“Hi,” I said when she picked up.

“Shit! Taylor! Are you all right?” Lisa said.

“Yep, but I’m on foot. Don’t suppose you could get me a ride?”

* * *

Lisa showed up in an anonymous gray sedan thirty minutes later. I had told her the approximate route I would be walking, and she had probably done the rest.

“You look like you’ve been through hell,” she said as I took the back seat.

“I’ve been playing dead well enough to fool medical professionals for about ninety minutes,” I said.

She whistled, and we drove off. “So, what happened?”

I shrugged. “Fought Glory Girl and Aegis. Maced her, deprived him of an arm —” I ran a finger across my elbow joint for emphasis “— Got any food? Water?”

She handed me a wrapped sandwich and a bottle of water. “So. That was some stunt you pulled. I’ve been following the PRT prime time show and they were in a tissy over Glory Girl accidentally killing someone. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen when word gets out you just up and broke out of the morgue.”

“We fucking did it,” I said between two mouthfuls of sandwich. “We robbed a bank.”

“We did it kids, we robbed this whole bank,” she reiterated and snorted.

“My dad is gonna be so mad,” I said.

“Oh yeah, you’re out to him,” she said. “How does that work?”

I shrugged. “It runs in the family. So, how long have you known about my power?”

“I figured it out a few hours after you’d told us. It fit too neatly that you had some sort of control, instead of it being just a ‘regeneration’ ability. The rest was guessing at your capabilities — did you know there was fakirs in Bilbao who could meditate their circulatory systems to a virtual standstill?”

I was not aware of that. “It is also the reason I am smart. I made myself smarter with it,” I said. That sounded dumb.

Lisa was quiet for a while. “That’s a game changer, Taylor, do you know that?”

I shook my head.

“Most Thinkers are just regular Joe-average humans with one —” she held up a finger for emphasis “— weird trick that makes I dunno, stockbrokers hate them. Like a person with a calculator is way better at arithmetic than a person without.

“You’re a smarter person, end of discussion. You don’t have some weird trick, you’re just plain old superhuman.”

I snickered. “Don’t tell E88 that.”

“You did good today. One hell of a debut. I’m getting you to a safe-house apartment I keep, and we’ll dispose of your contraband —” she gestured to my clothes “— with a little oil-drum fire. The vagrants nearby usually keep one going. Then, we’re going to lay low for the rest of the day. You should go home.”

* * *

Lisa’s apartment was a nice little place — homely, well-furnished. I helped myself to a shower and another sandwich while Lisa took care of the evidence. She had picked out an outfit for me from her wardrobe.

For the past year, almost, my wardrobe had served to hide myself from view. A defence mechanism, an armor — a cloak. When I had triggered, I hadn’t bothered to change that. Now that I actually wanted to change, the most provocative I had was semi-tight jeans and semi-tight back T-shirts.

This was something else. Leggings and a loose crop. A lace bra. On the basis of this alone, my estimate that Lisa was into women rose by a few decibels. Decibels were not only for measuring sound — the formula could be used to measure any numerical quantity against a reference. Ten decibels meant ten times as much, twenty mean a factor of one hundred, negative ten was one-tenth, negative twenty was one-one-hundredth.

Incidentally, one decibel of probability was about the smallest amount of evidence a human could discern for a given hypothesis.

I spent no small amount of time admiring myself in the full-length mirror. The efforts of my more ‘vain’ body-work from late February paid dividends.

Lisa came back in, and laid eyes on me. “Damn, now I’m all envious. Tomorrow, we’re going shopping, girl, because you need a new wardrobe.”

I let myself blush a little, and giggled. “Thanks.”

* * *

She drove me home.

“Did everyone come out of it unscathed?” I asked Lisa in a low voice, as we turned down the road where I lived.

“No injuries or deaths, for us, the Heroes, or the bystanders,” she replied.

“Then it’s been a good day,” I said.

“A very good day indeed,” Lisa agreed.


	31. XXVIII

Dad took it well, comparatively. It was a fact in my favor that nobody had gotten hurt, save for the one guy who had once before lost and arm and been all better the following day.

He also took a glass of brandy. I didn’t even know we had brandy around the house.

I spent the night in bed, too exhilarated to sleep, letting myself really ride the wave of positive emotions I so deserved to feel — I had earned the right.

Mentally I went over the problems I would now be facing. The PRT would have a much better bearing on my abilities, and I would have to re-establish the credible threat of any booby traps next time, which would probably put people in danger.

I had also expended my one use of playing possum. Next time I did it they would probably lock me in a cell until I started decaying in earnest, hooked up to all sorts of advanced vitals monitoring, and with armed guards.

Or just have Panacea check. I pictured the red-haired girl touching my cold, dead body and saying ‘she isn’t only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead!’ which was morbidly funny.

Then I happened on a fun thought: I could make it my thing to send apology bouquets to the people I victimized.

I let myself drift off to sleep at around one AM, and woke up at five.

* * *

Having been out of school since Tuesday, coming back was… Refreshing.

The fact that people seemed to be talking about the big bank job yesterday was also nice. I would have to scope out the best theories about ‘Para Bellum’ on PhO later.

The PRT had even released that fact that Para Bellum seemed to have escaped custody by faking death, up to and including fooling a PRT medical examiner. That was a point of pride.

“Hi.”

I looked up from my math textbook — an extra-curricular college-level one I had purchased with my Undersider’s salary — to see Emma.

She was wearing some expensive dress that was either modelling haute couture or a gift from a modelling contract. Her red hair was tied in a complex do, which she had likely learned to do herself from a professional stylist, the kind that was easy to mess up. Emma just walked that tightrope unerringly, when it came to style and beauty. She was blessed with good genes; never got acne, never got into socially awkward situations.

If she wanted to she could break any social code of High School and walk away unscathed. In some ways, she was still better than me. Perhaps she could be an asset in expanding my social skills.

Without my power to act as the catalyst, I would still be nothing. I had no delusions that I was not the driving force behind using a weak power to strong effect like I had — that part, the creativity, that was all me.

“Where have you been?” she asked me.

“Sick,” I said.

I was still wearing the outfit Lisa had given me yesterday, and it hadn’t evaded my notice that others were staring a bit. She had even given me bracelets to go with it.

“You… You look good today,” Emma said.

I looked up and smiled. “Thanks. You too.”

It was still awkward and stilted, but it was progress. Emma would probably never be able to forgive herself, but reconciling with me might be able to help her some.

* * *

Madison, of all people, approached me during lunch. Either Emma hadn’t talked to her, or she hadn’t gotten the memo.

“What’s your deal, did you trip and fall in the women’s section?”

I turned and looked at Madison with a neutral expression, just long enough to make the hostility apparent. Then I stood up and faced her.

She had a couple of cronies with her: boys who were obviously fawning over her, girls who were probably going to migrate from ‘Emma’s gang’ to ‘Madison’s gang’ sometime soon.

“Madison, I am smarter, stronger, and better looking than you — you could say it’s a new me. Now I don’t know if you got the memo, but Sophia and Emma both tried to mess with the new me. Sophia is in jail, and I can’t help but notice that Emma has dropped this whole ‘torment Taylor’ thing like last year’s spring collection; so let me ask: are you really, really sure you want to come here and jeer me?”

She snorted dismissively, but I could read the mote of doubt in her face. “Listen to this bullshit,” she said. “Taylor, you’re crazy.”

“Maybe; but crazy is the new sexy,” I retorted, and shifted my weight. Suggestively, I ran a hand from my hip up under my shirt and let my gaze dart across her entourage, especially the boys, licking my lips slowly and sensually — even adding a playful smile and wink.

Just a little bit of suggestion — it worked too. Their pupils dilated, giving away the arousal I provoked.

“Ask your boy toys who’s the fairest of them all,” I said, and picked up my tray to go eat somewhere else. With luck, I could use high school as a test bed for my developing social abilities, and then get my GED’s when finals arrived. That gave me two months to destroy all bullies in the school — if I found the time.

* * *

I dropped off my backpack at home and caught a bus. Not towards the Loft, but towards the market. Officially, Lord Street Market, but nobody really called it that. It was so far north of Boardwalk that you passed actual fields to get there. If it wasn’t for the tourist guides, tourists wouldn’t know to go there.

Lisa had even given me shoes — a pair of gladiator sandals. It was perhaps a little chilly for this kind of clothing, but I could regulate my body temperature better than most.

On one of the more reputable streets, I had my first run-in with street harassment. A car drove by with four young men in it, and one of them whistled wolfishly at me. I suppressed an impulse to do something about it, and merely noted the license plate and their faces for future reference. Perhaps figure out who of them was the owner of the car and drop an anonymous phone call to his employer.

Yes, I was petty.

My default walking pace was very brisk — I was tall, my feet never ached, and I didn’t tire from the exertion. Rough estimates put me at five miles per hour. Part of my speed was due to the fact that I had stopped heel-walking some time ago. With a little increased ankle mobility, and enhanced agility, it was very easy to lessen the energy-loss that came with the heel striking the road.

I reached the entrance to the market, and found the others — minus Rachel — waiting for me.

We hadn’t made the front-page of any of the major papers. The Bulletin had reported us on page three, mostly remarking on the fact that we had filled the bank with booby traps — ‘a ruse which delayed the efforts of the Wards and PRT by crucial minutes’ — and blown a hole in the back of the bank to make our escape. The last remark in the article had been that ‘debut villain Para Bellum stayed behind during their escape to engage the heroes in pursuit. During the battle, Para Bellum was seemingly fatally injured, but this later turned out to be another ruse, as she awoke in a PRT morgue hours later and made her escape.’

It had been one hell of an ace in the hole. The reason it wasn’t front-page material was that the bank was pussyfooting with the amount taken, reporting twelve thousand dollars, instead of the forty or so we had actually escaped with.

“Look at that, a real, live zombie!” Alec greeted me.

Playing along with the joke, I stuck both my arms out, crossed my eyes, thrust my jaw forward and groaned, walking stiffly forwards. This earned me a giggle from all of them. “So, what are we doing today?” I asked.

“Resting on our laurels,” Lisa said.


	32. XXIX

The Market was really just an endless sea of booths and the occasional food wagon. Booth renting was cheap, and business was plenty — the Market was so old and remained so popular that no-one had bothered constructing a mall up here, for fear it wouldn’t compete.

In the north end, you rented a booth instead of having a garage sale — booths were that cheap. And everything was sold and bartered here. From computer parts to fresh produce to trendy clothes to tourist kitch to hero merch.

Rachel couldn’t join us on account of being wanted for murder and not having a secret identity. Also, she tended to get belligerent around people who mistreated dogs — of which there apparently was a lot. Inconvenient.

There was a couple of things I needed — like my own laptop and a SIM-modem. We didn’t have cable at home, the laptop I was borrowing from Lisa was a disposable one, and going to the library was a hassle. I needed a workstation.

Alec found a Kid Win T-shirt, and I was inspired to buy an Aegis one. Lisa voiced her approval of the irony. We drifted on through the market, looking at whatever caught our eye. I’d done this only a small handful of times — once with Emma. It was a thing friends did, really.

Brian explained to me the procedure for the exchange: the Boss would take the money off our hands tonight, and pay us in clean, untraceable money; then we would lay low for a while.

Whoever he was, he had the mother of all laundering operations, all-right.

Brian trusted the Boss, and I suppose with good reason. The Undersiders were model ‘employees’ — rarely ever fucking up; and the Boss was consistent and quick in delivering the payments, and had never gone back on his word. For all I knew, he seemed like the kind of villain I aspired to be.

The only thing I had a nagging problem with was that it didn’t seem like they were sufficiently pessimistic. Lisa had tried to dissuade me from bringing the bag of tools which had eventually enabled our escape. Lisa had said we would be facing three or four Wards, and we met seven. If anything, Lisa should have told us to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

“I could use a better laptop—” I began.

“I’m going to steal you,” Lisa said, grabbing my wrist, apparently over-ruling my intention of finding a tech booth.

“We’re going shopping,” she said. Then to Alec and Brian: “We’ll split up and meet you two for dinner? Unless you want to come with and stand around and hold our purses while we try on clothes?”

“You don’t have purses,” Alec pointed out.

I had five fifty-dollar bills, a house key and a slim two-finger knuckle duster tucked in my bra, and my burner phone in a wrist strap.

Lisa had pockets in her dress.

In fact, we were all more or less in the leisurewear that confident and beautiful people wore. Which by association indicated that I was confident and beautiful.

Brian wore a tight-fitting dark-green sweater and faded jeans, accenting his athletic shape, and letting the green stand against his brown skin. Alec wore the red and gold Kid Win shirt over a white long-sleeve, with black jeans — he was lanky as I had been once. Lisa had a dusky-rose sun dress with grey tights underneath — same brand and size as the one she had loaned me, but full-length on her in contrast to on me.

“Figure of speech,” Lisa replied. “Do you want to do your own thing or not?”

“Whatever,” Alec said.

“You’re a real jerk, Lise,” Brian said with a grin, “hogging the new girl all to yourself.”

“Aw,” I said, mockingly. “We can arrange something. How does next week sound? You, me, a movie at your place?” I winked at him. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“Whoa, dude,” Alec interjected with a chuckle. “Dating in the workplace? Do we roll that way?”

I flipped the bird at him, which only made him grin harder.

“Sure,” Brian said. In his face I saw surprise, happiness, and a hint of arousal. “But anyway,” he said, changing topics with grace and confidence, “dinner at Fugly Bob’s?”

“Sounds good,” Lisa said.

* * *

“That was seriously smooth,” Lisa said to me as soon as the boys were out of earshot. “I mean, he doesn’t dig you that way — yet — but I’d say you have a chance with him.”

“Thanks for the dating advice,” I drawled. “I think I’ll be fine.”

“OK, I wanted to talk shop with you, though,” she said while we walked. “Also, your wardrobe needs an upgrade — you try to dress for your new look, but you haven’t had the chance to splurge.”

I nodded. “Sexy is the new me.”

Lisa snorted. “That was a horrible mash-up of snow clones there. FYI: the PRT has an internal memo about Para Bellum, they’ve given her a provisional rating: Stranger 1, Brute and Mover 0.”

“No Thinker?” I asked. Lisa shook her head with a slight smile. “What does a zero mean?”

Lisa shrugged. “It means something like ‘be on the lookout,’ without actually being a threat. They are discussing possibility of her being a combat-focused Thinker or Tinker as well, considering her gear and how well her aim was when she fought Aegis.”

It was fun talking about my alter-ego in third person. To anyone unsuspecting, we would sound like regular cape-geeks. Girls wanted bad boys after all.

“I thought they blacked out the cameras with Grue’s power?” I asked.

“Forensics work,” Lisa said. “The PhO on the other hand is going nuts.”

We found a clothing booth that both had something that caught Lisa’s eye, and changing rooms. Lisa and I began picking out outfits for me, though she had much more experience.

I tried jeans that hugged my thighs, dresses and shirts with daring cleavage at Lisa’s insistence. On my own I found more utilitarian clothes: tight tank tops to show off my arms and abs, cargo pants, vests with pockets. Lisa noticed the trend and found me a denim skirt with pockets.

“I’ve been thinking — it seems like Para Bellum is going to be a force multiplier for the Undersiders.”

Lisa looked at me, narrowing her eyes.

“They are awfully confident in their heists, but according to witnesses and forensics, she was the only one who brought any tools to the scene. They were also surprised by the fact that Panacea was in the bank, which prompted a strong response from the heroes. Without those explosives, the only option they had would have been fighting.”

“Are— are you dissing Tattletale?” Lisa asked.

I stepped out of the changing stall to let Lisa inspect a cocktail dress.

“You’ll need some heels for that,” she noted.

“I’m five foot nine, Lisa,” I chided, then shrugged. “Anyway, just looking at the facts. The Undersiders are gonna be in deep trouble one day — they are insufficiently pessimistic. Do you know about the Planning Fallacy?”

“I’m familiar. It’s valid criticism. Throw that dress over the top.”


	33. XXX

We finished clothes shopping rather quickly — I didn’t make a fuss, deferring to Lisa’s superior fashion sense. Then we walked through the market, trying to find a tech booth, people watching as we went.

Normal folks did people watching for fun. Lisa and I did it to sharpen our observational skills. In confidence, Lisa told me that she could only use her power continuously for about two hours a week. Normally, a burst of as little as a second was sufficient. Here, however, she did it to sharpen her regular skills — reading body language, articles of dress, conversation patterns, accents. The more she could find out unaided, the less she had to use her power.

So we watched people — usually couples interacting, trying to figure out how they felt about one another. I had the advantage of being able to read microexpressions and hear the changes in vocal stress, but Lisa had much more experience at weaving the unlikely narratives that people were made of.

We found a booth that sold surplus computer equipment — laptops and tablets from last generation. I brought one and, a phone-network uplink, a pre-paid data SIM with a Gigabyte of data, and an install disk for an open-source operating system. I also found a smartphone that seemed appealing — mostly because it was cheap.

“You’re into tech?” Lisa asked.

I shrugged. “A little. I’ve been meaning to get better. You’re good at hacking — maybe I could get good enough to help?”

She smiled. “We’re going to be fine friends,” she said.

“Do you want to find a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi?” I asked.

* * *

We made our way out of the market, and back towards Brockton Bay proper. The sun was out, and I suppose the short sleeves of my crop-top meant I had my ‘guns’ out as well. I carried all the bags — no reason not to.

“Are you wearing sun-screen?” I asked Lisa. We had been out in the sun for over an hour at this point.

“Yeah,” she said and looked at me. “You’re a really nurturing person, Taylor— how come?”

Brian had probably told her how I had offered him and Rachel water during the robbery. I shrugged. “You’re my friend; but you’re kinda… Normal, compared to me. People forget stuff, I don’t.”

She giggled. “Thanks for asking,” she said. No vocal stress at all.

“Gosh, I’m becoming the ‘team mom,’ aren’t I?” I said, and remembered an errant train of through that had popped up when she had complimented me on my dating skills. “Here’s a curve ball:” I said.

“Hit me.”

“Your microexpressions and haptics are different,” I said. They were — Alec, I suspected, was a sociopath with a different emotional reaction than most people, which neatly explained his oddities. Rachel had all the subconscious movement patterns associated with normal people, when interacting with her dogs, but they spoke of her being fundamentally incapable of relating to humans. That wasn’t the curve ball.

Brian was completely normal. Lisa was as well, except— she didn’t let anything on, unless — if my model of her was correct — if she wanted to. It spoke of some level of control.

“I’m a very good liar,” she said.

“Part of your… Talents?” I asked.

She giggled. “Partially. It’s impressive that you picked up on it.”

“Are you into girls?” That was the curve ball.

She looked at me for a mute second, then she started laughing. “Oh god, you’re good, but you’re really far off,” she managed after a few seconds. “I can see how you would suspect it — me taking initiative to spend time with you… No, you’re completely wrong. I’m flattered, though.”

I tilted my head, and Lisa began explaining.

“I don’t date,” she said. “At all. When I look at you, do you ever see— is it pupil dilation that indicates arousal?”

I nodded.

“Have you ever seen that in me?”

I shook my head. “But you have some control,” I protested.

“Method acting. That’s my other talent; if I have one. I’m very good at pretending. The reason why I don’t date, is because with my main talent, nobody has any mystery to them. I see all of people’s flaws, you know? All their dirt, all the skeletons in their closets. I solve people like puzzles.

“Can’t really fall in love with a puzzle, can you?”

I thought it over for a few seconds, then I made my reply: “Bullshit.”

“What?” Lisa said.

“Bullshit — Lisa, the ‘mysteriousness’ of a thing isn’t a part of the thing itself.” It was a epistemological proverb I had stumbled upon way back in March. “Take a locked-room murder mystery. As soon as you figure out the method and the killer, it’s not a mystery anymore.”

Lisa looked at me. “Hm,” she said.

“Are you asexual?” I asked. “That would explain a lot— what were you like before you found out you had those talents?”

I was absolutely loving the fact that we had invented new euphemisms on the spot.

“I guess I wasn’t— I had a few boyfriends, and liked it. I actually kind of miss it.”

“Then get over yourself,” I said. “Sure, you can solve people like puzzles, but that doesn’t make them any less people. And my dad once said that you like people for their qualities, but you love them for their flaws — which is bullshit, but it’s the kind of sentiment I think you should adopt.”

Lisa mulled on this for a while, and we walked in silence. “It’s disgusting,” she said.

“Hm?”

In a hushed voice she continued. “My power is pure TMI, Taylor. No off switch.”

My smile faltered, and it took me a little to think up a response. “Decent and neat people exist, Lisa. Otherwise, why not just learn to like the nasty?”

She winced, grinned and jabbed me in the shoulder. “Look at me taking romantic advice from a fifteen-year-old who has never had a boyfriend,” she said. “And to make it worse, it’s really good advice.”

I chuckled.


	34. XXXI

In the coffee shop, we ordered large lattes and extravagant pastries and hunkered down with my new laptop to install the OS and the internet uplink.

The shop was crowded enough for the ambient noise to make conversation anonymous, without being annoying.

Lisa used her smartphone to find guides, while I made heads and tails of the installation wizard. Eventually it all went surprisingly smooth, and the USB dongle that was my lifeline to the open internet automatically configured itself.

Then we started browsing PhO for news about the Undersiders. True enough there was tons of discussion about us.

“Actually,” I said. “I had a funny though. What if the Undersiders sent flowers to people after the fact, to apologize?”

Lisa looked at me with an evil glint in her eye, and by unspoken agreement we would set it into motion at earliest opportunity.

* * *

The discussion was lively. The Undersiders were more or less universally regarded as ‘dastardly villains’ in the discussions — a problem to be dealt with, sure, but there was an underlying tone of reverence.

We were the ‘cool’ villains. People who outright said so received infractions.

There was rampant speculation about the newest member, discussion of her name ‘Para Bellum’ — believed to be derived from the ammunition caliber nickname, but also from the proverb ‘si vis pacem, para bellum:’ if you want peace, prepare for war.

The fact that I had gone toe-to-toe with Aegis and Glory girl made various people give me utterly insane ratings like ‘Brute 7.’ There was theories that I was somehow super rich, given all my gear. There were theories that I was a Tinker, given all my gear. There were theories that I was actually just about anyone in disguise — from Alexandria to capes I didn’t even know of.

And then there was a thread that caught my eye. The Mayor’s niece had been kidnapped at roughly the same time as our robbery. No ransom had been made yet. Discussion there had dug up some rumor that the victim — a Dina Alcott — was a cape. The post instigating that thread of discussion had been deleted for speculating at the civilian identity of capes. I was able to infer from context.

“Lisa, take a look at this,” I said.

She did, and her eyes widened gradually. “That’s it— I saw it in the Bay Post too, all the way down on page 17… That’s why the boss was so keen on getting us to do this!”

“We were a distraction all along,” I said. “For a kidnapping.”

Suddenly, the Boss didn’t seem like a reasonable villain anymore.

* * *

We met up with Brian and Alec at Fugly Bob’s. It was the best of fast food joints, it was the worst of fast food joints. They even sold draught beer at the bar — no family-friendly international chain here, no sir.

The actual menu was an undisclosed two-digit percent grease by weight. It was the kind of place that gave diet nuts heart palpitations just by mentioning the name. The very worst offender was the ‘Fugly Bob’s Challenger’ which was utterly enormous and utterly disgusting, and exactly the kind of rampant look-I-am-a-parahuman-now wish fulfillment I was rolling in these days.

The restaurant itself had the same balance of anonymity-preserving ambient noise as the coffee shop, and there were dining booths that actually provided some privacy.

“You’re ordering the fucking challenger.” Alec said in disbelief.

“I’m a growing girl,” I said, and flexed my arm to show off just how buff I actually was. Completely incongruous with the feminine look my clothes gave off.

“The challenger is disgusting, and I hope you choke,” Alec said with a grin.

“I concur,” Lisa quipped.

“Not to be a nag, but I think I told you not to spend that much right after a caper,” Brian pointed out. “It’s the kind of stuff cops watch out for.”

I had come in carrying four shopping bags — one of them was Lisa’s, but still. She had purchased most of the clothes.

“I’m not stupid, Brian,” she said. “I spend this much on the regular, in case you didn’t know, so it won’t raise flags with the credit card companies or banks — and Taylor paid in cash. And this is pretty modest, all things considered.”

Brian grumbled something about precautions.

“So, what’s next?” I asked after the waitress had served us up enough fried vegetables to feed a small army.

“Dinner and dessert,” Alec quipped. He had apparently decided that watching TV was more interesting than pretending to be polite and pay attention to the conversation. Which was fair, really.

“The job is nice and all,” I said. “But so far I have had to punch far above my weight class in two out of two jobs, if you know what I mean. First the Asian guy with the dragon tats, and now the blonde idol and the burly dude with the high pain tolerance.”

“To be fair, you took initiative to get into those situations in two out of two jobs,” Brian retorted. “But I understand you might want something easier.”

“If Rachel was here, she’d be calling you a wuss,” Alec commented.

“And then I’d punch her in the gut again,” I said. “I’m not a wuss, I think we’re being kinda reckless in the bad way. Like we should do both easier things and carry a lot more gear and prepare for outcomes a lot worse.”

Brian considered this. “That’s wise. I assume you’ll be spot-checking Lisa, then? I’m starting to feel superfluous as far as leadership ability goes,” he said and smiled.

I winked at him. “Hey, you can be the hot sidekick if you want.”

Both Lisa and Alec snorted in unison. Brian smirked.

“Anyway, I actually have something serious I think we should share with one another — and it’s OK if you don’t feel comfortable with it, and you should take it at your own pace and all that,” I said, trying as hard as possible to build a buffer for what I was about to say next. “I’ll go first, but I think we should trade trigger event stories.”


	35. XXXII

That really spoiled the mood. Triggers were traumatic by nature, and I had expected nothing less.

The waitress arrived with our food — reasonable meals for the others, and an abomination man was not meant to eat for me.

“I know it spoils the good mood,” I said. “But it’s not like we can go to a therapist or some shit — they give you privilege, but that doesn’t protect from telling them you’re a… Bad guy.”

Alec was smiling weakly, the discomfort was plain as day in his face. Lisa turned away, Brian rubbed his eyes — a self-comforting gesture.

“Look,” he said. “I know what you’re saying, but to be honest, we’re not that close, all of us. We’re friends and colleagues, but not much more.”

“It would be a definite upgrade to the team,” I said, quietly. “And if everyone discloses, nobody is vulnerable. Face it: we’re a winning combination — we have mobility, a counter to ranged weapons, battlefield control, and not one but two expert planners… If we stick together, the sky is the fucking limit.” I looked around at the others.

“And as I said, I’ll go first, but I’ll warn you, it’s not an appetizing story. Try not to think too hard about it.”

* * *

For what it was worth, I was a pretty good storyteller. According to contemporary trauma-treatments it was important to re-contextualize traumatic moments — every time you remembered something, you slightly altered the memory when you stored it.

Well, my brain didn’t, but you get the picture.

One of the things that was most easily changed, was the associated emotions. Millions of PTSD cases were treated this way every year.

I went all the way back to my mother’s death — an important framing detail — and recounted the bullying campaign at the hands of Shadow Stalker. How they had stolen my stuff and alienated me from my peers. It culminated in the locker incident — I went light on the details, but they all still wrinkled their noses in disgust.

I told them how I had spent the next months isolating myself further, until I had my revelation about what to do with my abilities.

“But it turned out OK; the talent I got is pretty weak, but it helped me a lot. I know that’s really lucky, but… I’m stronger now, emotionally.

“I don’t despair, and I don’t get scared of things. As much as I bring to the table in terms of kicking ass and planning cool stuff, I want to share that as well. If you need anything, you can count on me.”

“Wow, how are you not a hero,” Alec said. “This was like, positively sappy.”

“Apart from the fact that Shadow Stalker almost killed me and didn’t even get a slap on the wrist? Let’s just say I don’t trust the system very much. And even if I did join up, I’d end up butting heads with everyone too pig-headed to realize how smart I am.”

“So, like Lisa,” Brian said.

Lisa jabbed him in the shoulder, with a smile.

“Well,” Brian continued. “I guess I should say ‘thanks for sharing.’ And now I’m going to feel like an arse if I don’t share so here goes:”

* * *

Brian lied. His story was plausible, probably rehearsed at great length, lots of little interstitial details, variations, the odd joke. It was a lie that a great deal of preparation had gone into.

But beating up his mother’s boyfriend to avenge his sister wasn’t how he had gotten that power.

And I wasn’t going to pry. If he didn’t want to share the truth, he probably had a good reason. No need to alienate my future boyfriend.

Yeah, that was an odd thought — since when had Brian gone from ‘friend’ to ‘potential boyfriend?’

I pushed it aside. He was after custody of his sister. That was why he was a supervillain, that was what the boss was offering him — money and lawyers to secure the custody. His father was too caught up in toxic masculinity to be a good parent and his mother was literally a crack head.

His sister was on a downward spiral, going on year three now. I could see why he was desperate enough to turn to villainy.

I reached out across the table and put my hand on his. “Thanks for sharing,” I said, mirroring his words.

He shrugged and smiled.

“Oh my god, get a room you two,” Alec drawled.

We both looked at him. “Why don’t you go next?”

“I’ll keep my skeletons in my closet for the time being,” he said.

“Me too,” Lisa said. “But Taylor, I’m glad we have you as a friend.”

* * *

The conversation turned more lively after that — I introduced the game of talking about our alter egos in the third person like cape groupies, and all the sneaky euphemisms Lisa and I had come up with. We talked about cape politics, about the state of Brockton Bay, about TV shows…

Brian and I discussed our purchases, and when I expressed interest in the fact that he was furnishing his apartment, he asked me if ‘movie at his place’ could be helping with interior decoration as well.

I actually ate the entire Challenger burger, and the waitress took my picture for it to put me on the Wall of Fame.

We came home to the loft in the early evening to find it desolate. Two dogs and no Rachel. Which was mildly troubling, but we were twenty minutes late. Brian had been the first one up here, and so the first to notice.

“We should get ready, the Boss is expecting the hand-over at some point tonight. Tardiness will be a mark in our permanent record aka. reputation,” Brian said.

The others went into their respective rooms, while Brian and I remained in the common room — and the clincher was that we both had to change.

“I’ll change in the bathroom,” he said, immediately defusing the situation before I could make a comment.

I opened one of my crates to get my riot gear — I would have to get a new light-gear set, because this was patently ridiculous. What I found on top startled me. A small leather sheath with a strange knife inside; a karambit. An eye that fit the index finger on one end, and a one-and-a-half-inch curved blade on the other. It was beautifully anodized — pearlescent, almost.

Under it was a note. ‘Saw it, seemed very you. Consider it a belated welcome present. Brian.’


	36. XXXIII

Heat rose to my cheeks. Belated welcome present, but easily could be construed as something else. And he would have brought it after I had invited myself on a date.

I geared up at breakneck pace — blue-camo battledress, vest, extremity protectors, helmet. A bandolier with flash bangs, smoke and a big pepper spray. I opted for the stun batons this time — shorter than my extendible batons, but with the added shock-value. I thought to use the karambit, but decided against it — I’d hold on to that in my civvies. I picked two trench knives instead.

As for guns, I picked a neat little bullpub SMG with a large holographic sight. It had a magazine that held fifty bullets and lay flush with the body of the weapon — it was compact and deadly. I also picked it’s companion pistol that fired the same caliber: a modern bullet designed to defeat body armor. Lighter than the nine-mill, and faster too.

Brian came back in his motor-cycle gear.

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s perfect.”

“I’m glad you like it, I wasn’t really sure — I saw you wear that little thing around your neck, and—”

I interrupted him with a brief hug. I wasn’t very huggable, all in body armor and like nobody’s business, but then again Brian hadn’t the most huggable costume either.

“Now if you two turtle-doves are done,” I heard Lisa say behind he. “Any word from our resident sociopath?”

Brian frowned. “No. Her phone is out of service, which it shouldn’t be, since I was the one who turned it on, activated it, and gave it to her just earlier today. Something is up.”

We all exchanged looks.

“I think…” Brian continued. “It would be a very good idea to check up on the money ASAP.”

* * *

We stripped out of our costumes, and back into our civvies. I put my entire outfit into a trekker’s backpack, and the others followed my cue, picking clothes that made them look travel-y — and giving them bags to hid costumes in.

Our storage unit was in the train yard. We caught a bus all the way out there, to the most destitute part of town by far. If the Docks was the ghetto, the Train yard was the slums. Sure, there were still actual trains there, but most of it was dead — had gone down with the death of the shipping industry in the Bay.

We made the trip under an amazing sunset, but I could only dimly appreciate it. We all hoped for the best, but feared the worst. Something had happened to the haul. To our hard-earned stolen money.

As a group, we walked from the bus stop near the Train yard, to the back of a derelict warehouse, where Lisa picked a lock to let us in. This time, there was no teasing, even if I stripped down to my underwear. Brian didn’t even look my way. Neither did Alec.

If Bitch had double-crossed us, I was glad I had brought the armor-piercing handgun bullets, but we wouldn’t stand much of a chance against her dogs.

The storage unit area was a block from the train yard proper, and was no less disorganized than any other storage unit area. It was a maze, with no system to the numbering other than within each individual block. It had clearly been built and added to organically over the years.

Storage units had been a good idea once when the economy was booming. Then they turned into drug dens and vagrant housing in the nineties. Now they were scattered all over the Bay.

We found the unit — thee-oh-six — and it was as bad as we had feared. A broad smudge in the thick layer of dust on the floor where forty thousand dollars in cash ought to have been.

“Shit,” Grue said.

“I vote we kill her,” Regent said.

This crime didn’t fit my profile of Rachel at all. “I don’t think she did it,” I said.

“Yeah,” Tattletale concurred. “The lock was picked. Expertly so. Bitch is more smash-and-grab. This is the work of a cape.”

“Villain,” I said. The PRT would have left it a crime scene. Rogues would have gone to the PRT.

“Villain,” she echoed. “More than one. And they’re still here.”

A slow clapping answered her. So slow as to be sarcastic. The archetypical ‘I’m a villain and you are too late to stop me’ clap.

I spun at the first clap, and beheld two people in unfamiliar costumes. Big white helmets, blue suits, bubblegum pink accents. Matching costumes, but far from matching bodies — one was the image of a silver-age comic book hero, the other was more like I had looked in December, but manly and with less charm. They stood on top of the row of lockers, opposite of ours.

“Brilliantly deduced,” one of them said — the big guy. He had been the one to clap.

“Über and Leet,” Tattletale and myself said almost simultaneously. “For a moment,” Tattletale continued, “I thought we had something to be worried about.”

I knew the routine. They would monologue, and we would most likely kick their asses. But this was an excellent time to be pessimistic about it all.

I leaned over to Tattletale and whispered: “Worst case scenario: they have backup.”

The two idiots worked alone, but it was not out of the question that they weren’t alone this time. They knew who we were, and they probably knew that I was heavily armed and dangerous. To go up against us seemed moronic to the point of being suicidal. Über and Leet hadn’t lasted this long by trying to commit suicide by villain.

Somewhere out on the horizon would be the little drone Leet used to record their shows on — live-streams of the two village fools getting beat within an inch of their life. I wondered if I could shoot it out of the sky — but I wasn’t going to waste my time or ammo shooting skeet.

Alec took the lead with the banter. “What’s the theme tonight? Your costumes are so terrible I can’t look directly at them long enough to figure out.”

Über stepped closer to the edge of the roof. “You—”

He didn’t get to finish. Regent shot out his hand, and Über lost his footing. My hands darted to a stun baton and while the others stepped back to give him space to face-plant, I stepped forwards to get a jab in — stealing Regent’s game, but whatever.

He was quick, but I was quicker. He manged to swat away my baton, but I withdrew before he could make a counter. Then he got some distance between us with a roll. Leet jumped down beside him.

“The money,” Grue said. “Where is it? How did you find it?”

“Your fifth team member led us straight to it. Lucky happenstance, really,” Leet said, grinning. “As for how we found her…”

Grue spoke in a low voice: “They did something to Bitch; they’ve got the money. If we don’t get a decisive victory here, our reputation is fucked.”


	37. XXXIV

No holds barred, leaving one of them in a state to be interrogated.

Über would be difficult to contain, due to the nature of his powers, so that would have to be Leet.

We had taken fifteen seconds to agree on that plan, and we hadn’t been the only one discussing tactics.

“Grue, Regent, take Über and keep him off me. I take Leet,” I said. “Don’t hold back at all, and make it quick and brutal.”

The pair had retreated from us, two dozen feet, to discuss their own battle plan. Like another Terminator, I began walking towards them, stun baton in one hand.

Über charged as well, hoping for a confrontation with me. Instead, he found himself stumbling, and Grue rushed past me as a living cloud of shadow to envelop him.

I took that as my cue to level into a sprint towards Leet. Leet reached behind his back and retrieved a mortar bomb — the old-school spherical cast-iron thing with a big wick fuze.

I pulled my gun, jumped mid-run to give myself some stability, and loosened off a shot towards the ground where he stood, intentionally making it go wide. The sheer noise of the gunshot made Leet jump, and it gave me the time necessary to close the distance and hit his wrist hard from above — making him drop the bomb. I lashed out with a well-placed kick and sent it flying like another soccer ball.

I didn’t let out, and jabbed him hard in the stomach with the stun baton, easily getting around his attempt at defending himself. He stiffened and doubled over, and I landed another hit on his back, sending him to the ground.

The bomb exploded a dozen yards away, and I felt the blast-wave — but the noise was muted and there was no heat. I filed that away for future reference.

Then I jabbed him with the baton, and watched him spasm. My baton went back in its holster, and I took a pair of zip-cuffs out of my belt pocket, and forced Leet’s arms behind his back.

“You picked the wrong people to fuck with,” I said. “If you even think of getting up, I’ll kneecap you. I’ve got superhuman reflexes and aim, so don’t get any ideas. And when I get back, I’ll pepper spray your asshole until you tell me where my friend and my money is.”

Then I punched him between the shoulder blades twice more, to be sure. The brutality of my actions would have been alien to my old self. Now, it was clearly necessary, and I was neither revulsed nor enthused by it — my power and my glands kept me level as gyroscope.

I turned back to Über, who seemed to be losing against Regent and Grue. His power was that way. Grue enveloped him in darkness, and Über came stumbling out, having taken a few blows impossible to defend from. Regent would trip him up, and Grue would repeat.

The next time Über came into view, I stood ready, and hit him with both batons in the back with all my might. It stopped his backwards tumble, and then Grue and I descended on him with a flurry of blows and stunning zaps.

“Stop,” Tattletale said after a few seconds. “You’ll kill him.”

* * *

Über and Leet had henchmen. It would stand to reason that their henchmen would be watching over Bitch and the money somewhere. Leet, it seemed, had passed out. Pissed himself too. Tattletale assured me I hadn’t killed him, but we didn’t have smelling salts.

“I have pepper spray,” I offered.

“That won’t work,” Tattletale said.

“OK, so how do we find the place they’re keeping Bitch?” I said.

“And the money,” Alec added.

“Honestly, I’m more worried for our friend,” I said.

“And with good reason too,” a mechanical hiss answered me.

Once more I spun to face a person standing on the roof of a storage unit. Same silly outfit Über and Leet had been wearing, but with a gas mask instead — red lenses too, and presumably a voice-changer.

“Bakuda?” Tattletale said, helpfully putting a name to the face.

The mad bomber who had threatened a university, and then been recruited by the ABB. A Tinker, specializing in bombs. She was most likely using the two dumb-asses as pawns. She was most likely after me — retaliation for her boss. Did she even know I was the one? Had some of Lung’s henchmen gotten a good enough look at me?

Bombs and, presumably, a motive to use them on me, it didn’t even matter how remote the chance she would do so to lethal effect. Leet had gotten my muted wrath. Bakuda would face my calculated and precise necessary escalation to lethal force.

I purged adrenaline from my bloodstream — it was a net detriment when I had my power to compensate. Ever since facing Lung, I had been using the wee hours of the night to think up new ways of being combat-ready. I had tested it out against Glory Girl and Aegis, and made modifications.

Now was the moment of truth.

“Fuck me, the game their costumes are from is… Bomberman?” Tattletale continued.

Bakuda stood straight and took a bow. Regent took this as an opportunity to try and trip her. She dropped to all fours so as to not take a fall.

I exploded into motion, three running steps over to the lockers, explosive kick-off, two steps up, hand assist on the edge of the roof to regain forward momentum, and then I landed on the roof. Quick-drew my pistol and put her at gunpoint. With no words I closed the distance in three quick steps. Bombs had a minimum safe distance, and I intended to keep her and me within it until she was no longer a threat.

“If you came here for vengeance, you miscalculated,” I said. “You’re a Tinker, and I know you do bombs, so you get absolutely no chances to negotiate. I have superhuman reflexes and aim, so if anything goes off, you become a bullet riddled corpse.”

She started laughing — a creaky mechanical sound. “I have a dead-man-switch.”

“I don’t care. You’re a narcissistic egomaniac with delusions of grandeur. I know you’d rather stay alive than kill a bunch of people; and if not, then you’re more suitable for the Slaughterhouse Nine anyway, and I’ll be doing the world a net favor.

“And if you hurt my friends and I have the opportunity, I’ll torture you to death instead. You have my word, and I never go back on my word. Lung was brutal, but I’m infinitely worse — because I’m smart.”

I hissed the last word in her ear. I had studied the ABB capes after taking down Lung, exactly in the event that they would retaliate. Bakuda’s PhO page was… Colorful.

I grabbed her by the collar and pulled her to the edge of the roof, keeping the gun at her temple all the while. “Sit,” I commanded. She did. I took her by the collar and jumped down, pulling her with me. My landing was fine, hers was painful.


	38. XXXV

We took her bandolier and grenade launcher, and I hurled them down the aisle, then we dragged her into our storage locker.

“She has bombs everywhere,” Tattletale said, looking intently at Bakuda. “Lethal ones. Hostages too. Many. Ten. A hundred. More. Bombs on people — no, surgically implanted. Bombs in buildings all over town. Shit.”

“Grue,” I said and took out a flash-light, turning it on and handing it to Tattletale. “Your darkness blocks outgoing signals. Line the walls, ceiling and floor, in case she has remote detonators. Then take lookout. Tattletale, identify hidden weapons.”

Tattletale spent three seconds utterly silent. “Mask has eye-tracker, works with toe rings for trigger, lets her set off bombs. Numerous smaller devices. It would be safest to strip search her. Her dead-man-switch will set off is she’s out of range for more than ten minutes. Vitals monitor implanted in her arm, goes to an amplifier in her armlet.”

I thought for a moment, then I crouched next to Bakuda, sitting on her knees with her hands behind her head.

“Oni Lee will fucking kill you for this,” she growled.

“Maybe,” I said. “So far the ABB track record at trying to murder me is two to zero. Here’s what’s going to happen:” I said, and unclasped my chin-strap with one hand, keeping the pistol steady at her at all times.

Then I pulled off my helmet and set it down. “In the absence of a black bag I can pull over your head and whisk you away to disappear forever, you get to turn around and take off your mask, then put on my Balaclava — backwards. Then I give Grue my gun, he covers you in darkness, and then you get to strip naked inside a cloud of darkness while he holds you at gunpoint. He’s the only one who can see into the darkness, that’s why you get my mask.”

“Fuck you,” she spat.

“Hey,” I said with ice in my voice. “You’re a Tinker. You understand why we can’t take any chances, right? This is the most privacy I can provide you — I’m being very reasonable here. Besides, you’ve put how many people’s lives at stake here? We robbed a bank, yesterday, and nobody got hurt. We’d like to keep the casualties as low as possible. If that means murdering you in the bloodiest and most gruesome way possible, then fine by me.”

I had done the same thing as with the bank robbery, creating melanin in my skin. Now I pulled off my balaclava in plain view of Bakuda. If she was smart, she would know this was a slap in the face — she was not enough of a threat for me to think revealing my identity was a big deal.

I handed the garment to her. “Turn around slowly, take off your mask, put that on backwards. Failure to comply will result in loss of kneecap.”

“There’s movement outside,” Grue said. “ABB thugs.”

“Quickly,” I barked at Bakuda.

She took off her mask, put it on the floor and dutifully put on my balaclava.

“Stand in the corner and undress,” I said. “Grue, you kill her on the spot if she does anything that even resembles not undressing.” She moved to the corner. A wave of darkness washed over her. I handed my gun to Grue, and he wisely covered it in darkness.

Then I drew my SMG. “Where and how many?”

“A couple of guys, down to the right,” Grue said, not taking his eyes off the patch of darkness.

“Grue, I might shoot at them, don’t be startled,” I said, and peeked out of the veil of darkness. Down the aisle, I saw five figures — ABB.

I peeked my gun around the corner afforded by the locker and shot two of them in the kneecap at twenty-five yards — aim, shoot, aim, shoot. The holographic sight made it enormously easy, and I stifled the ringing in my ears with a thought. The two collapsed with wails and yelps, and the others dove to the sides. They had no cover. One of them made a run for it, and I shot him in the ass. “We have your boss,” I yelled.

Now came the part where I had to convince them to keep Bitch safe. Surgically implanted bombs, Tattletale had said. Probably in her henchmen to steal their loyalty from Lung.

“If you move, the next one goes through your head. Drop your weapons!” They didn’t. I let another shot ring out, whizzing over the head of one of them. He ducked reflexively, and threw his gun aside.

“Now listen the fuck up!” I screamed. “If anything has happened to our team-mate or her dog when we find her, I blow your boss’ brains out, and the bombs inside you explode. Nod if you understand.”

They did.

“If anything of the loot is missing when we find it, I blow her brains out, and you all explode. Nod if you understand.”

They did.

“If Oni Lee shows up, I blow her brains out and you all explode. Nod if you understand.”

They did.

“If you go pass on this message, I’ll let you get to a hospital! Slowly!”

Wisely, they slowly got up, holding their hands up. The two uninjured ones helped their injured comrades up and they retreated.

Once they were out of sight, I retreated back into the darkness. “We’re holding the ABB thugs hostage with Bakuda’s dead-man-switch now. How is the strip search going?” It was eerily quiet inside, owing to the sound insulating property of the darkness.

“She’s almost done, removing her underwear now,” Grue said.

“Fuck, Para Bellum,” Alec said. “Bellum? Belle. Belle, you’re one scary fucker. I’m glad we’re on the same team.”

Tattletale was separating bombs from clothing, carefully. Bombs went on the trench coat, anything like detonators went in a small pile on the floor. The darkness was only an inch thick. Tattletale was holding the flashlight in her mouth as she worked.

“OK, her underwear is off now,” Grue said and reached into the darkness to take it off Bakuda’s hands. He held it out and Tattletale looked at it.

“Nothing,” she muttered. Grue handed it back into the shroud of darkness.

“All right, make sure she gets dressed, I’ll keep watch.”

* * *

Nobody else came. We were running enough risks as it were. I bundled the bombs Tattletale had selected into Bakuda’s trench coat, wrapped it up and hurled it the same way as her other gear.

Grue dissipated the darkness covering her.

“Where are you keeping our team-mate?” I asked. “Address. We’ll know if you’re lying, and you’ll lose a finger.”

She told us a nearby address — explained it was an old warehouse.

“You’re going to tell your guys to get the fuck out of there, and if they don’t, I go in guns-blazing and shoot them in the head, and then Regent cuts all your fingers off. Capisce?”

Going by her vocal stress, she was nearing the breaking point. My cold, callous threats of extreme violence seemed to be getting to her.


	39. XXXVI

We emerged from the storage locker, with Bakuda zip-tied and blinded by my balaclava. It was a very fine mesh of fire-resistant material — more like the one worn by race car drivers than special forces. It was not see-through.

Tattletale held the various detonator devices in her hands and was wearing Bakuda’s gas mask and the dead-man-switch armlet was safely on Bakuda’s arm. Tattletale led us more or less directly to Bakuda’s forces. Fifty at least.

I peeked around the corner at the gathered mob.

“Two options,” I yelled to them. “One: you drop your weapons get the fuck out of our sight. Two: my friend uses your boss’ toys to set off the bombs that are inside of you.”

There were civilians in the mob, armed with improvised weapons, probably forcibly recruited — by way of implanted bombs. They all looked positively terrified. The actual members similarly looked unnerved for much the same reason.

“My advice? Go turn yourselves in to the PRT, tell them you’ve been the victim of a Tinker weapon. They might be able to help.”

When they didn’t move immediately I twisted around the corner and fired off a shot that went over the crowd, then screamed at full force: “Go!”

That made them scramble.

* * *

We found the warehouse abandoned. It was full of containers, and Bitch was tied to a chair in the midst. She had a black eye and a few scratches. She looked relieved when I turned the corner to find her. The others, guided by Tattletale were looking for the haul.

“Where’s your dog?” I asked. That would be what she was most worried about.

“I don’t know,” she said, bothered. “Somewhere. I heard her bark.”

I pulled out one of my knives and began cutting her loose. “Let’s go find her.”

As soon as she was loose, she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly. From the other end of the warehouse, we heard barking.

We found the little terrier locked in a transport crate in one of the containers. Bitch tore open the crate, and lifted the dog out. The little one-eyed terrier licked her face.

“Is she OK?” I asked.

Bitch nodded.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

She nodded again.

“We found it!” I heard Tattletale yell.

* * *

We called up the boss, and a black, unmarked van came shortly after to pick up the spoils. I tied Bakuda down in one of the containers inside the warehouse, gagged, and didn’t breathe a word to the Boss’ henchmen about the encounter.

“So, what do we do with Bakuda?” Alec asked once we were left alone.

“We turn her over to the PRT,” I said. “They will have the resources necessary to defuse all the bombs she has put out.”

“If she co-operates,” Tattletale said, “it might not even be go straight to Birdcage, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

“We’ll take Bakuda somewhere safe. I’ll talk to her, then call Armsmaster,” I said.

* * *

I dragged Bakuda wordlessly to the rooftop of a different warehouse a few blocks away. It was getting dark out, and the streets were empty.

There were damp spots on the balaclava. She had cried.

I set her down on the roof and untied her gag. Then I turned the balaclava around so she could see.

“Hey,” I said, softly, and sat down beside her. “I’m going to call up Armsmaster now, OK? No more threats, no more mad bomber. He’s going to come pick you up, and you’re going to help him defuse all the bombs you’ve put out, OK?”

“Fuck you,” she breathed.

“I hope you’ve had some time to think about this, but can I ask why you did it?”

She didn’t answer. That meant I had to go down the list and read it from her microexpressions — and I only had the eyes to go by.

“Was it Lung?” He was in a vegetative state still, so it was unlikely— nope. Got it in one. “He’s in a coma, you know?” I said. “I hit him so hard he bled into his brain. He’ll be in the birdcage before he can tie his shoes again.”

There was something else.

“Were you going to try to rescue him?” Yep. That bore the question of what the plan was. I thought it over and went with the obvious one. “What, you would set off all the bombs as a distraction, and then Oni Lee would attack?”

That was it.

“If you’re on your best behavior from now on, I’ll put in a good word with Armsmaster — I took down Lung, and now you — and maybe you can cut a deal and become a Protectorate Tinker.

“Shadow Stalker — you know the Ward? I hear she was a total sociopath. You’ll fit right in.”

Bakuda just glared at me. I stood up, and walked to the other side of the roof, gun in hand. Then I took out my burner and dialed from memory, keeping her in plain view the whole time.

The dial tone went off once.

“Hi,” I said. “Armsmaster? It’s Para Bellum, we met Sunday night when I threw an AC at Lung’s head.”

“Yes?” he said. There was a measured chill in his voice.

“Yeah, and I robbed a bank, yesterday. Oh, and do trace my call, that way I won’t have to tell you the address.”

“Get to the point,” he said.

“I have Bakuda,” I said. “She’s all yours, if you want her. I’m looking at her, zip-tied and disarmed, and I have her at gunpoint. She’s unhurt, too.”

He didn’t say anything.

Then I gave him the unexpected habanero: “My friend Tattletale tells me Bakuda has put bombs all over the city, and you guys are the only ones who can deal with that.”

There was a measured silence, and a sound of typing. “You’re right about that,” he said.

“Anyway… She’s been through a lot. She attacked us because of Lung’s capture and to try and get the money from the bank. I think I might have accidentally subjected her to some serious psychological pressure tactics. But as I said, she’s unhurt — maybe a few bruises at most.”

No reply.

“I think she’s willing to co-operate. And if you can get her some counseling, she might become a fine Protectorate hero one day. Anyway, I’ll let you talk to her.”

I put the phone on speaker and walked over to Bakuda, and put the phone down next to her. Then I headed for the stairs.

“Am I speaking to Bakuda?” I heard from the phone as I left. “This is Armsmaster…”


	40. XXXVII

Down at the ground floor, the others were waiting. Grue cleverly filled the entire warehouse with darkness, as well as all the surrounding alleys and a bit of the street. Whoever wanted to get to Bakuda would have to go through that first; and if Oni Lee wanted to get her out, they would have to brave the darkness inside the warehouse as well.

Bitch had turned the terrier into a monster again, and we rode back on her. Lisa, Brian and Alec were less conspicuous when carrying their costumes around in civvies, and carried fewer highly illegal weapons.

“What’s her name?” I asked Bitch, as we reached the rather desolate docks and unmounted on a rooftop. The poor thing looked like it was about to fall apart, with sagging muscles and crumbling bone spikes.

“Angelica,” Bitch said.

“And the others?”

“Brutus, Judas.”

“Brutus is the German Shepherd?”

“No.”

I nodded, and started undressing. “We almost got blown up today,” I said. “How about you?”

“Tied me to a chair and beat me a bit. One of them hit Angelica,” Bitch said. “Oughtta track him down and kill him.”

I nodded. “I know how you feel.”

* * *

Back in my civvies, carrying my hiking backpack, I called Lisa.

“Did they pick her up?” I asked.

“Yeah. No problem except the darkness,” Lisa said. “You?”

“Nothing to report. Rachel and I are almost to the Loft.”

I hung up. We trudged the rest of the way, into the factory, and up the stairs. Brutus and Judas were overjoyed at Rachel and Angelica’s return.

We had almost died. If I had been any slower — given Bakuda any chance to make the first move, we would have been at a massive disadvantage. Who knew what kind of bombs a Tinker could build? If nothing else, regular explosives were terrifying enough on their own.

But on the other hand, I had also been… Scary. It was easy as pie to just turn off irrelevant emotions and in calm detail make threats on people’s health and livelihood. The worst part was, that if I made a habit of using this effective tactic, I would have to follow through every once in a while to maintain credibility. And I would be more than capable.

Hell, I wouldn’t even develop traumatic memories or anything — I could control my memory formation well enough to make cutting someone’s toes off with gardening scissors as mundane as eating breakfast.

Another problem entirely was that I had just dismantled the entire ABB leadership. Without Lung, the whole thing would probably fall apart and create a massive power-vacuum. I had more or less done the Empire 88 the biggest possible favor of all.

I needed to talk to Lisa about that, but for now I just called my Dad.

“Hi Dad,” I said.

“Taylor. What’s up? It’s getting kind of late, are you staying over?”

“I took down another ABB villain today. Nobody got hurt. I think you’ll hear about it in the news tomorrow. I’ll come home tomorrow.”

We said our good-nights, and I curled up on a sofa — not that I was tired; but sleep seemed like a good way to process my emotions right now. One hell of a first week of villainy.

* * *

I woke up at five in the morning, under a blanket. Under normal circumstances, I might have felt uncomfortable, going to bed without any evening rituals and sleeping on a sofa in my day clothes, but once again my power came to the rescue.

No feeling of being dirty, no woolly teeth, no bad breath, and I might as well have been sleeping on eiderdown and silk sheets.

It was eerily quiet in the Loft, and I tiptoed over to my shopping bags and found a tank top and cargo pants. Normally it was best to wash such things before wearing, since they could contain proofing chemicals and even pesticide residue — but if any such things actually got in my bloodstream, I could cut the molecules apart.

There was stuff to do which would be noise — field-stripping my guns, for instance. I’d fired all of six bullets, out of the two hundred or so I had brought with me. Almost three pounds of bullets. It was excessive, but if it had come down to a gun-fight with that mob of people, and I had to defend us?

I pocketed the knife Brian had given me, put my laptop in a suitable bag, and headed out.

* * *

The morning was clear, air was cold and fresh, and my thoughts wandered.

Power came from having something to protect. That was a thing I’d read once, somewhere.

Bakuda had been defeated because I had to protect my friends. Was that really all it took for me to turn into a monster? A better framing of the question was perhaps: what justified monstrosity? I’d cost three men their mobility — knee-shots rendered you invalid for life, or there abouts.

Was I justified in using something easily classified as torture, even if hundreds of lives were at stake? It was easy to say definite ‘yes’ but in situations like that a healthy amount of doubt was more than warranted.

How accurate was Lisa’s assessment? Had Bakuda wanted to go through with it? Had Bakuda even intended to kill us? It seemed likely, and my instinct was already ask Lisa, which led me back to the first question.

I’d trodden carefully with my self-modification regimen. Asked myself philosophical questions about the nature of goodness and beauty all along the way, read an introduction to axiology — the study of value — and best as I could made a set of tests.

But my power put neuron impulses directly into my head. Alec’s power did too. Who was to say that these ex-nihilo patterns of neurological activity were just a mechanical thing. The existing literature noted the apparent physics violation of powers, and the famous Manton effect was irreducible in complexity.

Why could Panacea not revive the dead? Why were pyrokinetics protected from fire, but from no other injury? Why could force-field users not create force-fields inside people — barring Narwhal. What made Narwhal’s ‘second trigger’ special?

I took out a notebook and scribbled down the questions in neat calligraphy. Easier to hand it off to Lisa for future reference than to talk her through it.

My destination was a coffee show up on the boardwalk that sold good coffee in thick Styrofoam cups, and even better pastries. They also opened at six AM.


	41. XXXVIII

I must have been a sight to behold, coming in as soon as they opened and sitting down for the free WiFi.

“You’re early,” the barista commented.

“Didn’t sleep well,” I said and skimmed the menu. “Twenty-ounce whole-milk Latte to stay, please. And a bread roll. Do you have cheese and butter?”

“Sure do. Double shot espresso?”

“No thanks.”

I didn’t need the caffeine to be awake. In fact, caffeine didn’t wake you up — it stopped the neurochemical pathway that made you sleepy, letting the brain’s natural stimulants work unhindered.

To be honest, I just liked the taste. Bitter was interesting — most of the chemicals that triggered the bitterness receptors were poisons. Chemically, bitter taste was like horror movies: the signal of danger without the hockey-mask wearing machete-brandishing guy.

The barista took my twenty-five dollars, and served me a warm bread roll with a small tub of butter, a slice of cheese, and one of ham. Then he started preparing my coffee.

He was a cute, younger guy — Japanese. That gave me an idea for smalltalk.

“Do you follow the cape scene?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Can’t say I do.”

“I listen to the police scanners,” I said. Most of the sensitive chatter was encrypted, but some was left open to the public — mostly for journalists. “Last night, there was an announcement that ABB leader Bakuda had been captured, and to be wary of gang activity.”

“Huh,” he said.

“There’s rumors the ABB did forced recruitment at her command, since Lung was captured.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, it’s always good news when another villain is off the streets.”

* * *

The coffee was delicious, the bread roll was very good, but the cheese and ham were mediocre.

I sat there for almost an hour and a half, browsing news feeds and PhO and the occasional tech magazine for variety. There were very few people coming and going on a Saturday morning like this.

Around seven, the morning news came on and the morning news came out — although I didn’t listen, nor read anything, I saw the effects on the web.

The PhO exploded. The PRT had been gracious enough to actually credit us with the capture — but the story framed them as the heroes; for the sheer effort they had gone through overnight to get the defusing operation going. They were prioritizing the bombs planted around the city, keeping the victims of Bakuda’s surgical adventures in quarantine for the time being.

The entire PRT was in motion, and someone had made Bakuda talk — ‘full cooperation’ according to the official statement.

There had already been a first casualty — a explosives ordnance disposal crew had messed up and one of their numbers had gotten killed. Article didn’t say by what.

There was yet more speculation on the abilities of the Undersider’s newest member. Brute ratings, Tinker ratings, the occasional crackpot that thought everyone was a Master-Nine or Alexandria in disguise.

Perhaps I should work on my publicity. I texted Brian:

> 
>         breakfast and teambuilding exercise at the loft
>       

I ordered five coffees to go, and a big bag of bread and pastries and headed back — this time by bus. My phone pinged with a reply.

> 
>         sure
>       

* * *

“I’ve been thinking,” I said.

Alec had not been especially thrilled about being woken at eight AM on a Saturday, but they had all been in bed before midnight. A little sleep deprivation never killed anyone. The coffee and breakfast helped.

Rachel, as it turned out, usually got up early to walk her dogs. She had been up and awake, and although she didn’t say it in so many words, she was quite happy with the surprise breakfast.

Lisa was nurturing a mild headache that had persisted overnight — overusing her power during the fight with Bakuda.

Brian had just arrived, looking fresh — clean shaven, even.

“I’m getting the impression you do that a lot,” Alec said.

“Yeah. Yesterday, we got lucky,” I continued. “We won, and everything went better than expected, but if Bakuda had not been an idiot, we could have ended up dead.”

“Taylor,” Lisa said. “An idiot, by your standards is anyone who isn’t better at tactics than a Green Beret, and/or has an IQ below one-fifty. I’m on the fence about the ability to play politics better than a US Senator.”

I shrugged. “Anyway, I think we should all start carrying more gear — not a lot. I know most of you wear protective vests already —” Grue and Bitch in particular, Regent had a very light model “— but I’m thinking we could work within the confines of our costume styles to fit in a bit more protection, tools, and combat options.”

“Do you have any examples at hand?” Brian asked.

“I am so glad you asked,” I said, with a smile. “Here’s one: you should wear a military helmet like me. A motor-cycle helmet provides no ballistics protection, and you can get skull visors for them too.

“Alec, you should consider wearing an arm-protector. Maybe gold-plated, we could find something stylish, but I’m thinking something strong enough to let you block a baseball bat.

“Lisa, you need a bag of tools like I brought to the bank. It would play well with the cat burglar vibe.

“Rachel, you should carry way more weapons in general — I’m thinking a riot shield and a pickaxe handle, a helmet too.”

My rapid fire suggestions were met with thoughtfulness and I could almost guess at the objections bubbling up.

“Before you say anything, take a moment to remember how much ass I have been kicking in the last few days. Ever since the bank, and now with today’s headlines, we’re a high-profile villain team. No more obscurity — the Empire will have their eyes on us, and they do not fuck around. I’d hate to have to murder the entire villain roster of the Empire in retaliation when they kill one of you.”

Alec grinned. “Aww, you really do care.”

“Taylor, just so we’re clear, please don’t go out and murder all the Empire capes,” Brian said.

I smiled. “Exaggeration for emphasis.”


	42. XXXIX

We discussed back and forth, and I shared some of my other ideas: utility belts and what to put in them, team tactics, codes of conduct as a team.

“We need to send a clear message to prevent Bakuda-like incidents,” I said.

Lisa quoted my unspoken catch phrase: “You don’t fuck with the Undersiders.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we need to be accountable and reasonable. Willing to forgive minor stuff if people apologize and don’t do it again. We need to be a group you can count on.”

“We already have a good track-record with the boss,” Brian said. “He could pull some strings, give some recommendations, maybe.”

“I also think we should do some PR work,” I said. “Video-blogging, maybe. Pet issues, statements, get us some verified PhO accounts. Some of the stuff people said about me after the robbery was not all bad.”

“I don’t really want to be famous,” Regent said. “I’m trying to lie low.” He was distinctly uneasy at the prospect. I filed that piece of information away for later.

“I can’t read,” Rachel said. No shame in her about that — in her face, or in general. I added ‘teach Rachel to read’ to my to-do list.

No problem so big you couldn’t find a solution. “Well, maybe it could just be me, and I could figure out some roles to play, bring you guys in for brief commentary.”

“Fine by me,” Brian said said.

“Also, I was thinking we could send flowers,” I said. “To the heroes and assholes we’ve victimized. It can easily be construed as an insult, but if there’s a backlash we can spin it as heartfelt. People would be able to see us as repentant, good-natured-fun villains or savvy and snide, competent bad guys as they please. Again, if you’re not in on it, I’ll make it my own pet project — this is just a suggestion.”

This got them to perk up a bit. Lisa, I knew, would already be with me on this.

I smirked. “Dear Brockton Bay Central Bank, sorry about the wall, love, The Undersiders.”

“That sounds deliciously ironic,” Alec said. “Like, ‘Dear Aegis, sorry for cutting off your arm, love, Para Bellum.’ That’d be great.”

“Dear Über and Leet,” Brian intoned. “Sorry for beating the crap out of you, love, Grue, Regent and Para Bellum.”

“Yeah, see?” I said. “Endlessly entertaining.”

* * *

Lisa found a scheme of throwaway money transfer channels to let us order flowers from a florist that delivered same-day. I didn’t know much about flowers, so we ordered ‘get well soon’ bouquets for all of them.

Then I went out to make my first vlog. Lisa had a spare computer for hacking, with a phone network uplink dongle and pre-paid data SIM, much like my home machine. I took it, a cheap video camera, and my light-weight costume to a rooftop a half a dozen blocks away — an abandoned apartment complex

The first thing I did was create a new PhO account: `ParaBellumOfficial`. The first thing I did with that, was sending a picture of myself, holding a piece of paper, in costume, to a moderator.

> 
>         Subject: Verification
>     
>     Si vis pacem, para bellum.
>     
>     I am Para Bellum member of the Undersiders, I'd like to get
>     my *Verified Villain* tag.
>     
>     My powers aren't very flashy, but I can send pics or vids of some acrobatics?
>     Costume is in the shop after fight with Bakuda yesterday.
>       

Shortly after, I got the reply back:

> 
>         Subject: Re: Verification
>     
>     Sounds dubious. Please provide materials within the next hour,
>     or I will give you an infraction.
>       

To demonstrate, I taped myself doing a one-handed hand stand, some hand-stand push-ups, a triple backwards somersault from atop a chimney, and a spot of juggling knives.

Ten minutes in a video-editing program, and I had a neat little film.

> 
>         Subject: Re: Verification
>     
>     Here's vid of some top-level acrobatics.
>     
>     Extra details only I would know: the building the PRT found Bakuda
>     on was covered in Grue's power. Bakuda's equipment was found in the
>     storage locker area close by the train yard.
>       

I waited another few minutes.

> 
>         Subject: Re: Verification
>     
>     Seems OK for now. Will hand off to others for review, and
>     we retain the right to ask for more proof.
>       

* * *

“If you want peace, prepare for war. Hi internet,” I watched myself say to the camera. It was strange looking at the finished product — my video-editing was sub-par, but quickly improving.

“It’s been some week, huh? Lung gets taken out on Sunday, Brockton Central gets robbed on Wednesday, and Friday night, Bakuda gets captured.”

I walked a bit back from the camera, showing off my costume — dark blue cargo pants, black shirt with striped sleeves, stab vest, knee-pad with a star on it, dark blue balaklava, and a red scarf.

“You might not recognize me — I usually look more like a SWAT operative or a riot cop, but it really is I, Para Bellum.

“First, I wanna say, my heart goes out to all the bomb squads and surgeons working to undo Bakuda’s handiwork right now. I’m so glad I could be of help — that shit could have gotten ugly. I’m a bad guy, but I don’t wanna see people killed, you know?

“Second, I’m pretty new to this whole thing, so I though I would make a video-blog out of it. Here’s the lesson I’ve learned this week: things can always get worse, and the best way for me to end a conflict is to end it hard and fast.

“I don’t have flashy powers — I’ve got some strength, some speed, some regen, and a Thinker power that’s a bit hard to describe, and definitely nothing impressive. But nothing else. Everything I do, I do by using my tools and my skills. Oh, and I guess you can feel free to ask me anything in the thread I post this to. No promises on whether I will answer, though.”

I uploaded it to two different file-sharing services, and did the same to my verification vid, then hunkered down in the sunshine and wrote the introductory post, linking to all of them and the footage from Über and Leet’s streams.


	43. XL

My Q-and-A session had been a modest success — infractions had rained down on everyone making lewd comments, and people had asked questions about things like my patriotic theme, my guns, my abilities, why I was a villain, how the other Undersiders were, how we had taken down Bakuda…

I put thought into every answer, and wove a narrative about having lost my trust in ‘the system’ and how this wasn’t grounds for rebellion; but rather that I didn’t trust myself not to topple it from the inside if I joined up.

Being a villain, I still got to do good: I was the anonymous benefactor in Lung’s capture, as well a major factor in Bakuda’s. An Anti-Villain. As for guns, I pleaded the second amendment. Other capes got flashy superpowers, all I had was a steady hand and good reflexes. I made a promise to record myself shooting skeet at some opportunity.

I explained that the other Undersiders were a bit more private than me — they would likely be making appearances at some point, but I would be the main show-runner of this whole vlogging business.

The footage from the fight with Über and Leet showed some details — us taking down the two fools brutally and me overpowering Bakuda, followed by the shootout with the ABB guys.

I wrote that Über and Leet had made the mistake to ally with a dangerous and manipulative villain — it was no fault of theirs. They were only after our stolen money.

Bakuda had made the mistake of putting my team mate in danger and getting within my reach. I had taken the dangerous criminal at gunpoint to protect my team-mates. Playing a dangerous high-stakes game of chicken, I had cowed her into submission with my superior interrogation skills, and my trusty team mates had disarmed her.

Using her as a hostage, we had scared off her henchmen and rescued our friend, and recovered our ill-gotten gains; then we had handed her off to the authorities so they could take care of the bigger problem. All in a days work of upright villainy — if society went under, so would the criminal underworld.

They ate it up.

I came home in the early afternoon and told Dad about the fight with Bakuda.

* * *

“You weren’t kidding about doing good,” Dad remarked when I had finished. “This is what, two major villains in a week?”

I shrugged. “It wasn’t really on purpose. Things just happened.”

“So, what are you going to do next?” he asked me.

“Get good instead of lucky,” I said. “Can you help me convince the school to let me take my GED’s this year?”

Dad nodded. “Sure, I suppose. Isn’t school getting better, though?”

“Yeah, it’s not that. It’s just — I’d like to take university classes.”

“Ah,” he said.

That wasn’t the real reason. By all statistics, I would probably be dead before I got a masters degree in anything.

* * *

I found a seedy little dojo that taught self-defence, and bribed the instructor into giving me solo lessons. She was an Israeli immigrant, ex-military, had moved to USA with her husband. She was a bit taller than me, and almost as strong.

I was a Latina girl with money and an absurdly athletic physique, who wanted private lessons and didn’t want her to ask questions. I knew she knew was some kind of cape, but as long as nobody said it out loud…

The arrangement fitted us both perfectly, and I had my first lesson in getting the crap beaten out of me Sunday.

“You have a good energy, good endurance, and good reflexes, but you need to practice a lot more,” was her verdict. “Your form is sloppy and piecemeal.”

* * *

I made the same arrangement with a Filipino martial-arts instructor who was similarly low on funds. Same deal: paid in cash, lessons at odd times, no questions asked.

He taught me sticks and blades, and was delighted to find out I carried a karambit.

* * *

I was a lot less secretive about learning how to shoot. There was a shooting range not far up in the north end, and I just enrolled there legally. No reason why a young girl wouldn’t be interested in sports shooting.

They were only a modicum of condescendingly sexist until I clustered six rounds from a revolver in the heart area of a paper target at thirty yards.

In a single day I shot almost two hundred rounds of ammunition from various weapons — pistols and rifles, and a single shotgun. A thing that quickly became obvious was that I would need to practice with a favored gun. I already had taken a liking to the ones I’d used against Bakuda, so I started thinking of ways to practice shooting them without drawing attention.

* * *

I vlogged more. Recited little think pieces; one of them in full armor. Made a video of shooting skeet out beyond the city limits.

Rachel was, surprisingly, open to giving an interview. I filmed her in an abandoned apartment, and she talked about dogs — and threatened to do horrible things to people who hurt them. There was a lot of sympathy for her cause of ending underground dog-fighting.

I was featured in the local news, as a pendant to Über and Leet — they mentioned the flower bouquets and apology cards too.

* * *

“You’re going on a date?” Emma asked me.

I had gone out of my way, and invited her for coffee after school. She had insisted on paying, so I had taken her to the good coffee shop on the Boardwalk.

“Yep.”

She paused, no doubt noticing old habits. “What’s he like?” she asked.

“Big, athletic, gentlemanly. Black,” I said. “He’s turning eighteen soon.”

“Oh wow. How did you land someone like that?” she asked. That might have been a sting once, and we both knew it.

“Martial arts class. I was buff, he was buff… He pinned me to the floor and I asked if that was how he treated all the pretty girls.”

Emma giggled. “True. How did you get so fit?”

I blushed — on purpose. “Well, after — you know — I decided to turn my life around. Started exercising like a mad-woman. Decided to just power through.”

She nodded, sagely. It was total bullshit. One did not just recover from depression, but it was socially acceptable bullshit. Emma probably didn’t know much about mental illness… Speaking off.

“Did you start seeing a therapist?”

She nodded. “Yeah… It’s good. Thanks for… You know.”

I raised my coffee cup. “To getting better?”

She touched hers to mine and smiled. If she could shrug off her guilt-complex, I might even get my friend back with some effort.


	44. XLI

Brian’s apartment was in the nice part of town, up north. It was spacious and decorated with… Intent. Very Brian: contrasts of dark and light, minimalism.

“Is this where you’re going to be living with your sister?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Where should her room be?”

“Over here,” he said, and led me to a fairly spacious room. There was a bed, a desk and a view, but nothing else.

“What’s she like?”

“Do you want to meet her?”

I shrugged. “Tell me about her. I’m smart, maybe I can help you get ready for her to feel welcome?”

“Sure, actually, I think I have a copy of her file from the CPS.”

* * *

Aisha Laborn was a serial runaway. She was a straight up juvenile delinquent and hung out with unsavory types like teenage drug peddlers.

The list of offences and incidents was not short. Underage drinking, loitering, petty theft, property damage. The psych profile was bleak. She was also about my age.

“Do you love her?” I asked Brian.

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s my sister.”

I nodded. “Does she love you?”

“Yeah. We’re not on extremely good terms, but I’m her favorite family member by far.”

“Tell me more about her.”

“Weren’t we going to watch a movie?” Brian joked.

“After I make sure I’ve done what I an so you get to have your sister in your life, sure,” I said.

* * *

When I felt I had a rudimentary grasp of his sister’s profile, I took another tour around the apartment. “I think it’s good you’ve given her a big room, but I think you need to give her space in other parts of the house as well. If she doesn’t feel welcome, I don’t think she’s going to stick around.”

“Hm,” he said. “Do you have anything specific in mind?”

“Make it less minimalist. Add some color. I’m not great with interior decoration, but you know her well. What kind of furniture would make her feel at home?”

Brian mulled on my suggestion.

“And remember to do stuff with her. Make it feel like you’re a family. Learn how to bake and cook — it doesn’t have to be really good, just good enough that you can cook her favorite meal and bake her a sponge cake for the house warming.

“Actually, you could ask her if she wants anything in the house when she moves in — even if she requests something extravagant or silly, make sure you get it. Show her — don’t tell — that this is a place for her.

“And set some rules, but make them cool rules — let her go to bed when she wants to, but if she complains about being tired, it’s a dollar in the jar — being late for school is ten dollars in the jar. Let her hold parties, so long as people don’t do anything illegal and don’t smoke inside and she cleans up after herself. That sort of thing.”

Brian sat by the dining table and smiled at me. “How much have you thought about this?”

“Literally five minutes,” I said. “What do you think?”

“You have a scary good head on your shoulders,” he said.

* * *

We watched an Earth Aleph horror flick, and it amused the both of us to no end that either of us could be way scarier than the monster. I obsessively pointed out every continuity error and the conversation turned to how to actually be scarier.

Brian had a definite advantage with his darkness — it was visceral and made you helpless, and inside the darkness you were likely to get the shit kicked out of you by Grue.

My counterpoint was that pin-point aim with modern weapons was way scarier. I could fit the ‘super soldier’ archetype easily. To demonstrate just the sort of fear I could evoke, we switched to watching First Blood — the one with Rambo.

Then we discussed how fast Brian could generate darkness, and I calculated that he could cover Brockton Bay in about an hour of continual darkness generation, and as long as he stayed within it, he could keep the entire city in darkness indefinitely.

That was a scary thought.

Lisa could similarly wreak large-scale havoc, by digging up dirt on everyone, hacking everything, and then detonating an information bomb that could put every politician in the city out of a job, and make every bank and major company crash and burn. It would take some doing, but we both judged she was capable.

Rachel could just start turning every stray dog into a monster and let them rampage through the streets. Fifteen minutes of rhino-sized canine rampage wasn’t anybody’s idea of a good time.

Neither Regent nor myself had anything to contribute in the grand scheme of destroying cities without resorting to mundane means.

When we were both suitably unnerved, I suggested we go for dinner.

* * *

We found a running sushi place, where the mood was high. Apparently the victims of Bakuda were had received the help they needed now, and the store manager’s son was one of them.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” I asked Brian in a hushed tone.

“I guess,” he said.

“You know, if they ever do get captured, this would be the point in their favor that lets Grue and the others plead out and become heroes.”

Brian looked at me suspiciously.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m not saying the Undersiders are going anywhere, but it beats going to jail if they slip up.”

Brian snatched a California roll I was about to grab, in lieu of a retort. He smiled smugly at me as he chewed.


	45. XLII

We came back to his apartment block and stopped in front of the door.

“Taylor, thank you for a really fun night,” he said. “You’re witty and amazing, and it’s a delight to talk to you.”

I smiled and blushed. “Do you wanna do this again some time?”

“Yeah, that would be nice,” he said.

We stood there in the evening breeze for a beat. Brian’s outfit for the night had been a white tee, tight jeans, and a suit jacket. I had chosen my jean-skirt with pockets, a loose long-sleeve blouse, and thigh-high socks.

The only problem was that Brian wasn’t making any advances. I could clearly see what he wanted. I’d grabbed his wrist once during the evening and his pulse had been elevated. His pupils were dilated, his face was flush — every physical indicator that he was into me.

“Brian, are you attracted to me?” I asked.

He hesitated for a moment. “Well… Yeah, I guess. You’re good looking.”

“Do you wanna do something about it?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Invite me upstairs for an evening cup of coffee, talk quietly, maybe find the impulse to kiss me, one thing leads to another and we end up in your bedroom?”

“Um, you’re fifteen — the age of consent is—” he began.

I giggled. A gentleman to a fault, oh my god.

“Brian,” I said quietly. “I’m a bank-robber by trade, do you think I care about draconian modesty laws from before parahumans were a thing?”

He paused. “I suppose not.”

* * *

We sat down in his kitchen and he started a neat little coffee machine — one of those that brewed espresso from little aluminum capsules. His kitchen had a literal bar, complete with bar stools. Very classy. Brushed steel surfaces.

“There’s a thing I haven’t told you,” I said. “About my power.”

Brian turned around, and leaned up the kitchen counter. “Hm?”

“Lisa already knows, of course, but I think you deserve to know as well, if… If we are standing on the precipice of a torrid love affair, I guess. My power is consciously directed. It’s a form of body control.”

Brian parsed what I had said. “So… Shapeshifting?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Being smart? That’s something I did to myself on purpose. Remodeled my brain.”

Brian whistled. “That sounds… Complicated.”

I nodded. “Anyway, one of the things I can do is, I can read people. Microexpressions, body language, changes in the voice — like Lisa.”

“Ah,” he said. “Thinker ability. So in essence you’re even more of a Tattletale light… That’s a potent cocktail.”

“Yeah, but I’ve been reading you, and all the others. I’ve not used it for much other than figuring out how you feel — but I saw you, and honestly you’re my type, so I decided to seduce you.”

Brian raised an eyebrow. “I don’t feel very… Seduced.”

“No, I’m playing pretty soft-ball. I just wanted you to know that I use my power in little ways all the time to interact with people. All my reactions, all my movements, all my facial expresions, if I want to I—-” Brian chuckled. “It doesn’t seem to bother you,” I said.

“Hey,” Brian said. “We’re parahumans. Beyond human. You’re a bit more beyond human than me in some ways. But so far, you’ve been nothing but nice, kind, and caring.”

I smiled and blushed. “I try.”

“Besides, I deal with Lisa every day. She’s a good friend — she’s almost my type even, but there was never really any chemistry. Then you come along: brash, smart, quick on the uptake… Hot.”

I blushed further. A small voice in my head informed me that I could theoretically control myself and clean up my neurochemistry into something that resembled respectable, and I hushed it forcefully.

“Brian,” I said. “How much coffee drinking and smalltalk do I have to do before it is socially acceptable for you to carry me off to bed?”

* * *

Needless to say, I was already late for morning classes when I had woken up in sheets of Egyptian cotton, soaked in his intoxicating scent. If I was going to miss morning period, I might as well go all out; so I had cooked us breakfast.

Brian took the plate of scrambled eggs and bacon from me with a smile. “You, have quite the appetite,” he said, and kissed me on the cheek.

I just smiled. My cheeks were flush, my strides were long and smooth, and all my movements had taken on a character like dancing. “I’m sorry,” I said — song in my voice as well. “It’s that more-than-human thing — endurance.”

“As long as you cook me breakfast afterwards and don’t count on me more than three times a week, I’ll manage,” he said. The hairs in my neck stood on end in delight.


	46. XLIII

On my way to school, my thoughts circled around the events of the night, and there were more than a little spring in my step.

I’d kissed Brian goodbye — and oh he was an amazing kisser — and considered telling him those magic three words.

Well, love was complicated, but the sentiment was right. What I was feeling was infatuation — an almost intoxicating state that was no doubt designed to make you feel really good, make lots of positive memories about your partner so you would stick together until your future children were grown, an also to make sure said children actually came into the world.

It was chemically induced irrationality coming from inside the house, and it was the most powerful aphrodisiac in existence, and I was thoroughly enjoying it.

Could I see myself with Brian in a year? In two? In five? For now I couldn’t even see myself alive in two years, so it didn’t matter much. Brian was incredible in bed. That was what mattered.

I called Dad to apologize for staying out all night. I had left him a note to say I might be home late, but ‘late’ did not usually mean ‘spend the night in new boyfriend’s bed.’

* * *

As Emma sat down with me on lunch break, I cast a glance around and spotted Madison, all but turning green with envy.

From what I could tell, Emma’s credibility had taken a hit, and there was some intense drama going on.

“You’re glowing,” Emma said with a knowing smile. Of course she was no stranger to sex.

I wasn’t even trying to hide it. I just grinned and reveled in the new-found state that had been with me all day at this point.

“I assume it went well with your… Date,” she said.

I nodded with a wry smile. “How about you? Any romance in your life?”

Emma, as usual, had been to one of those high society gatherings that capes attend in costume — to celebrate the aversion of the catastrophe that could have been Bakuda’s work.

There she had met a certain blue-haired boy and she had gotten his number. They had spend the time since mostly flirting by text. That blue haired boy was Eric Pelham. Son of Sarah and Neil Pelham, brother of Crystal. Also known as Shielder, son of Lady Photon and Manpower, brother of Laserdream.

Fitting, really. Emma got everything she wanted; as always.

I was essentially now one degree of social separation away from the heroes now. Well, zero if you counted bullying and Sophia.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Emma said to me in a hushed tone.

“I promise,” I said. As much as I liked to say ‘you have my word,’ that was my catch phrase as a villain.

If this was a coincidence, it was the very strangest of them. If it wasn’t a coincidence, I couldn’t see how anyone could engineer this.

* * *

It wasn’t awkward. Awkward was my conversation with Dad when I came home.

Dad was smart — I had told him I had a date with Brian, and when I hadn’t come home, he had put two and two together. He was in his right to be concerned, but it was unfounded worry. I was responsible when it came to my reproductive health, yes we had used protection, no he wasn’t forceful or manipulative or threatening in any way, yes I would call before I stayed out all night again like I had done before.

I had robbed banks and stared two murderous supervillain in the face, but this was still something he decided to make a big deal of.

“You worry too much,” I said to him.

“You’re my only daughter,” he said.

I cooked dinner, we watched TV, I asked him apropos of nothing how much sex he and Mom had enjoyed when they were newly in love which made him spit his drink. A fitting retaliation.

I talked him into getting a cell-phone, just so I could text him status updates to prevent situations like last night. He was reluctant, as I had been, but I made him promise never to talk or text when driving.

* * *

Rachel of all people were one to compliment me on my sexual conquest when she found out.

Alec teased us both endlessly.

Lisa just smiled knowingly in that infuriatingly smug way she had.

* * *

And that was how the week went — my life seemed to actually be going places. I was a reputable super villain, I had a hot boyfriend, an active sex life, I took evening classes in how to beat people up, and on Friday I presented all the Undersiders with the equipment upgrades I had worked so hard on.

Lisa got a runner’s backpack, into which I had stuffed all the compact tools I could think of: from a miniature pry-bar, over a bit-head screwdriver with bits for all the uncommon screws, to a multimeter.

Alec got the golden arm bracer — plate gold. It would handily stop a knife or a bat.

Brian got a ballistics helmet much like mine, and a full ballistics vest as well at my insistence. The visor was skull-themed.

Rachel also got a ballistics helmet, a round acrylic riot shield, a pickaxe handle, and holsters for both. Riding atop one of her dogs, she would look like a warrior of old. We had a spar for her to figure out the ropes of stick-and-shield fighting. My Filipino Martial Arts classes already paid off then and there.

And in addition, I had put together utility belts for all of us. Pepper spray, zip ties and a single pair of zip cuffs, a pocket-sized pistol, first-aid kit, money, and a pocket for burner phones.

Next time someone threatened our lives, we could all pull guns on them.


	47. א

All good things came to an end.

If I said the week had only been good things, it would have been because we were severely lacking in information.

As it became readily apparent on one fateful Friday morning, the Empire Eighty-Eight had far from been idle. They had decided to make a push — a big one, into ABB territory. Lisa told me so in a text, which made my phone buzz in my pocket in the middle of math class.

We were studying logarithms, and I had long since realized that there was a three-way relationship between the base/radical, the exponent/logarithm/index, and the power/radicand which was really opaque in conventional notation.

The next text arrived a few minutes later: Oni Lee had gone on a bombing run, with what was left on Bakuda’s stash. Victor had probably killed him, officially ending the ABB. Early estimates of casualties were in the low three digits. Property damage looked to run into the millions.

At this point I started getting antsy. This was a regular gang war, and might very well end up a massacre. Since Bakuda went down, the number of Asian kids in gang-colors at Winslow had dropped. That was probably a good thing — meant most likely that the less fanatic members had learned of the horrors perpetuated by the boss and gotten the hell out of dodge. If not, they might very well be facing down skinheads with almost a dozen capes behind them.

I had studied the roster of the Empire: Kaiser, Fenja, Menja, Rune, Krieg, Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Cricket, Alabaster, Victor, Othala.

The next text informed me that I had been wrong: Kaiser had gone and secured the help of some former Empire members. Night and Fog were from the German motherland, an organization I couldn’t even pronounce, which tortured kids to make them trigger. Purity had gone off the grid, and taken Crusader with her.

So now it was the remnants of the Asian gang versus fifteen capes and god knew how many Neo-Nazis.

This would have been bad enough if not also the Merchants wanted a piece of the cake. The Docks, after all, were up for grabs, and the Merchants sported four capes strong, and a whole lot of destitute and desperate people.

Unfortunately, the Merchants were strategically complete back-births, and so blacks, druggies and hobos would also be dying by the droves.

“Miss Hebert, can you tell me what is so important on that phone?” Mr. Quinlan said the fifth time I received a text.

I looked up and met his eyes. “Yes. There’s a gang war in progress as we speak.”

Gasps echoed through class.

Then, conveniently, a faint explosion was heard.

We would not be allowed to leave. The PRT would issue a ‘stay indoors’ recommendation, which schools like Winslow took to heart by preventing everyone from leaving. That way we were nice fat sitting ducks if the E88 decided to show up.

In fact, I didn’t need to worry about that — there already were fanatical Neo-Nazis under this roof, and still a few dozen ABB-color-wearing idiots. If any of them had brought a gun today, there might be a shootout.

But really, I had bigger things to worry about.

Because, apparently, when they had huddled together in order to make a plan, Rachel had fessed up to hitting a dog-fighting ring owned by Hookwolf. Look no further for a reason to screw us over.

I was out the classroom door before the news reached the Principal’s office.

It didn’t take much for someone to look at my videos and figure out that most of them were shot on rooftops in the Docks, and that the Undersiders likely made base there.

> 
>         hi dad. gang war going on. staying with a friend, will be home late. be safe.
>       

* * *

On a rooftop I took my light costume from a secret compartment in my backpack: a shirt with striped sleeves and a pair of dark blue leggings with a star on one knee made for the base. With it, I wore a fragmentation-resistant stab-vest that folded nicely, a pelvic protector, a dark-blue balaclava, a foldable hard-hat helmet in appropriate colors, and a red handkerchief. My weapons was a polymer knuckle duster, my anodized karambit, and a good pair of lightweight running shoes.

Yeah, it was a far cry from full ballistic protection and the minor arsenal I carried with me on the day job.

Stowing my civilian clothes in my backpack, dismantling my smartphone, and turning on my burner, I hid all my stuff in a cranny.

My power set into effect the skin-tone change I now used on the regular and set off towards the Docks. Using the no dictionary and a steady hand, you could text without looking — I could do it at a flat sprint.

I texted the number to what I had come to think of as the ‘requestions officer’ — that same contact of the boss who had helped me before the robbery and with the utility belts since.

> 
>         para bellum here. need battle rifle w. ap ammo asap.
>     light and sturdy. bullpup?
>     holo sight. big magz.
>       

There was no reason to think the Empire would do anything other than go hard. If it came down to a confrontation at with Hookwolf, I wanted something that could punch through two inches of steel at four hundred yards.

Then I texted Lisa.

> 
>         coming in portable costume. bring my gear?
>       

* * *

The fighting was so far mostly confined to the lower docks — the ABB had been pushed back over the last hour. Whatever stands they made were useless, as an Empire cape would show up and turn it into a massacre. They had adopted a scorched earth tactic; burning safe-houses as they went, and along with those most likely cash, drugs, and evidence. Every confrontation left them more caught between the Empire and the deep blue sea.

If those idiots had just turned themselves in instead, the police could have taken them all into protective custody.

But people weren’t that smart. Gang members tended not to put a premium on their own life — Grue had eloquently put it: a reputation is best built by staying alive and not fucking up. Another proverb that came to mind was that “you don’t win wars by dying for your country, you win by making the other poor sod die for his.”

But if we wanted to keep our rep, today was one of the days where we had to stay alive, keep our base, and perhaps capture some territory.


	48. ב

The Docks were so large that to get from Winslow at the edge, to the Loft which was square in the middle took ten minutes of straight running.

And I wasn’t the only one on the streets. There were bound to be PRT blockades, bands of Nazis, bands of ABB fleeing from the Nazis, heroes, Empire villains… I would have to be careful. A karambit could cut deep, but only up close.

* * *

I didn’t even get a third of the way to the Loft when I ran into my first obstacle — in a blur of red, someone tripped me. Velocity. A light impact to my back leg in mid leap was all it took.

I lost my balance, staggered one step, and rolled to gain control. The blur followed and started raining light blows all over me, each of them nothing on their own, but in aggregate it kept me off balance. Desperately, I lashed out with a sweeping kick, hitting air. Once again, his blows came at inconvenient times from bad angles, and I lost my balance.

If Velocity was here, chances were that backup wasn’t far behind. I couldn’t shake him and I couldn’t hit him.

What I knew of Velocity was that he had speed — mental as well as physical — but in proportion to his speed, his strength lessened. Even to my enhanced reflexes he was a blur. If I had a pepper spray with me, perhaps I’d have a chance, for now I needed a way to escape, quickly.

I held up both hands. “Hey! Talk?” I yelled.

He slowed, coming to rest on top of a nearby parked car — well outside my reach. I’d have hoped he was stupid enough to slow down where I could grab him.

“My team-mates are out there, and they’re in trouble,” I said. “I’m the cause of all this shit— Don’t you have bigger fish to fry than me?”

“Taking you into custody with your current getup is too good an opportunity to pass up,” he said.

I’d have cursed under my breath. “Please,” I said. “The Empire’s the ones doing the damage here— I swear to god, if something happens to my friends—”

“Shut up,” he said. “Your little spiel of pity won’t—”

I didn’t let him finish, instead, I put on a display of fear, hastily pointed behind him and scrambled to my feet. Prudent as he was, Velocity spun to look, and I lunged from sitting into a leap onto the face of the apartment building behind me — clearly inhabited — running two steps up and gaining purchase on the cornice that separated the ground floor from the first.

With a heave, I pulled myself up, grabbed onto the bottom of a window and managed to stand on a narrow strip of building ornament. I broke the glass with the eye of my karambit and undid the latch inside, then I turned to cast a glance at Velocity.

He had divined my attempt to escape — seen through the ruse diversion a moment too late to stop me from getting onto the building. He seemed to be built like an eight-hundred-metre runner, so I had no delusions about his ability to kick down doors. He blurred into the building, no doubt to find the apartment I was trying to escape into.

Instead, I jumped down and landed with a roll, then quickly ducked into the niche by the front door. Above me I heard a dull-thud and crash. He had probably kicked down a door.

Primed and ready, I sat, waiting for Velocity, and I didn’t have to wait long. In less than a second he had searched the flat, concluded I wasn’t there, presumably looked out the window and seen I was gone. He came down — I heard the buzz of his footfalls, and the instant he crossed the threshold I exploded.

Hot-wiring my muscle-fibres directly with my power, I lunged forward with enough force to incur microfractures and lacerations. Even despite my lightning quick reaction, Velocity was presumably coming out at a run. With his power active, that made him move at something like two hundred miles per hour. In the time I lunged the three feet forward to attempt to slam him, he moved so far past me that the only result was hooking him around the hips with my elbow.

We both tumbled and I almost lost the grip on him — as useful as my lessons in grapple techniques had been, they did not prepare you to grapple someone who was vibrating and had the surface texture of grease.

He twisted in my grip, as I landed on top of him, and went back to normal. Then he elbowed me in the back. Being bigger than me and quite strong, he did real damage. Two more strikes and I would have to worry about the hairline fractures in my ribs.

With a heave, I got control of the grapple and he started raining blows on my exposed neck with fists in reinforced gloves. I kneed him in the groin, expecting him to be wearing a cup — after all that was only sensible. His fighting style seemed to center around using his speed to disrupt and protect himself, and then occasionally going slower to deal harder blows.

He wasn’t wearing a cup but managed to twist out of the way. His back thigh took the brunt of the blow, and he grunted in pain and sped up. Exploiting me being off balance, he twisted out from under me in a blur, got to standing, and leveled a kick to my face — dropping back to slow just before he hit.

I managed to make it glance off my helmet — barely — and rolled with the blow onto my back to let me defend myself. The follow-up didn’t come.

Velocity retreated twenty paces in a blink and stopped, holding a finger to his ear.

“I’ve got her, she’s mostly unarmed— and what, let her go? Yes, of course.”

I didn’t need to stick around to infer that he had just been called away — as soon as it became clear, I rolled to my feet and ran off.

* * *

The second obstacle was much more mundane and easier to overcome, even, but oddly more threatening.

Not three hundred yards down the street from where I had left Velocity, I turned into an alleyway. By all accounts, running through back alleys ought to be safer.

My misconception was revealed for what it was when I turned the corner and found four bald-shaven men in leather jackets hunched behind containers. Four details I picked up instantly: they wore swastikas, they were tense, one of them was looking at a phone, and they were all armed.

They were waiting for orders. The Empire had a coordination network for this gang war?

“Shit!” one of them said. “Cape!”

At any other time, if I had been in riot gear and had something other than two closed fists for weapons, I could have taken them. I was already flinging myself back into the alley I had come from before any of them could bear their weapons down on me. Behind me, I heard them scramble to their feet to pursue, but I rounded the corner, coming out into the street, and hugged the wall.

When the first of them rounded the corner, he did so without the caution of an experienced soldier, and this time, the discrepancy of speed was in my favor, as I leveled a kick in the first skinhead’s midsection. I ran on without sticking around to look, which turned out to be a mistake as one of them proceeded to fire a handgun at me.

I should have been running zig-zags, but I was too focused on getting away quickly. The bullet graced my hip, and my power gave me a clear and detailed view of how it tore a chip of bone with it. I vaulted over a parked car and ran across the street.

No major damage, though, but still. I needed my damn armor.


	49. ג

I finally reached the block with the brick factory. Darkness covered the streets and ducked into cover to check my phone.

There was nothing from my arms dealer contact, but Lisa had replied:

> 
>         Cellar of abandoned complex next block over. Temporary base. Alley access. Look for darkness.
>       

That was odd — why would they go so far as to set up a temporary base? None the less, I made my way there, as stealthily as I could. Running through alleys, peeking corners, and darting across open streets. The place was indicated by Grue’s trademark darkness blocking out the ground-floor alley windows – I almost missed it as I came running.

* * *

Grue opened the back door and didn’t even greet me. He looked up and down the alley, then shut the door behind me. I gave him a brief hug. He looked me up and down.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

The gracing wound on my hip had already stopped bleeding. “Nothing major. Ran into Velocity and narrowly got away, then E88 thugs.”

“Shit,” he said. “Let’s get you dressed up.”

He led me to the staircase, and we descended to a short utilities maintenance hallway. By the end of it was an open door — the lock had been removed entirely.

Inside was Regent, Tattletale and Bitch. The dogs were already lion-sized — barely able to fit through the door. Tattletale had set up two computers and some kind of beefy mobile-network modem.

And in the corner sat one of my crates.

“Here’s the deal,” Tattletale said without looking up. “The Empire has this shit more or less in hand. They’re making power-plays, probably aimed at us, in addition to the merchants. Purity has demolished two buildings in the neighborhood already. One to make a statement, and one decoy which we covered in darkness.

“They might think they got us — that was how we were able to sneak off here.”

She had answered one of my unasked questions right there, and at the same time explained why they were camping out away from home. I unclasped the rolling crate, and found the gear I regularly stored there, with several weapons on top.

“I took the liberty of selecting,” Tattletale explained.

It was still more than enough. Grue handed me a first aid kit, and I went to work on dressing wounds and dressing up.

* * *

After a brief session of strategizing, we took to the streets. Bitch grew her dogs to their monstrous sizes out in the alley.

It would have been nice to have that battle rifle, but for now, the SMG and a shortened shotgun would have to suffice. No pistol, stun batons, trench knives, and my usually outfitted bandolier.

When it came to capturing turf in a gang war, marking it was usually done with graffiti. To that end, we had Regent, who had outfitted us all with black spray paint and we’d come up with a symbol. It was kind of cheesy, but we had settled on the Ophiuchus symbol, a ‘U’ with a squiggle through it. Simple enough to do quickly; as well as easily recognizable.

The streets were empty — with the gang war all over the news, there was little reason for civilians to venture outside.

The decision to actually go out and claim territory even though we had nothing to use it for, had been hotly debated over dinner on Tuesday. Rachel had been for it, Brian had been against it, Lisa had urged caution. The rationale for doing it was that it would give us some space to breathe around the Loft.

The routine had been to carrying one’s costume with in civilian dress, out to an anonymous locale in the city, and changing there. This had a number of problems, not the least of which was that I’d have to carry a lot of street-illegal weapons in a hiking backpack.

Alec had jokingly suggested I dress in black tie and pretend to be a musician.

We began tagging buildings at the mouthes of alleys. We’d make a rough circle around the block with the brick factory, and patrol the streets in full force, one street at a time. Grue would leave plumes of darkness in his wake, making him seem even more like some effigy of the grim reaper. Bitch rode Brutus while Angelica and Judas followed along doing their own thing. Me, Regent, and Tattletale walked together.

How Tt managed to walk and use a laptop at the same time was a wonder — it was a netbook, to be sure, and she was typing one-handed, but she still managed to keep track of most things.

I checked my phone again while Regent tagged another wall.

“I wish we could do something more elaborate,” he said. “It’d be cool with some murals.”

“They’d be defaced,” Tattletale said. “But you’ll get more time later.”

“Tt,” I said. “The boss’s arms dealer isn’t replying to my texts.” There’d been nothing so far, and it had been almost an hour.

She looked at me. “That’s weird. Do you have the right number? What did you order?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Guns. Something with more power.”

She gave a non-committal grunt. “It looks like the Merchants are getting kicked out of their claim,” she said. “The ABB is still putting up a fight, but they are getting cornered. Looks like a lot of them are turning tail.”

“Which means we might be facing some heat soon?” I said.

“We can probably negotiate something,” she replied. “We’re not drug peddlers or pimps; we don’t actually earn money on our territory, we just want to be left alone.”

“And I took down the ABB in the first place,” I said. “That has to count for something.”

Regent shook his can of paint, making a loud rattle. “Besides, who’s to say we can’t kick their asses? Between Bitch, me, and Grue, what can they do? And we have you two eggheads to direct the battle.

“And if nothing else, Bellum can just put them at gunpoint and threaten to torture them to death.”

If I didn’t have full autosomatic control, I might have shuddered at the way he said that. I might have scared them with my apparent callousness, but Regent seemed… Reverent of it.


	50. ד

My phone rang. I picked up, put it on speaker and Bitch spoke.

“There’s some fucks coming down Hamil Street. They’re slow.”

I looked over at Tattletale — we had taken to sitting in the bunker where she had better data access, to discuss. Grue and Bitch were patrolling, Regent had gone to get us food.

“Do you need my help?” I asked.

“Maybe. There’s a cape.”

That meant yes. “Are you on the rooftops?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay where they can see you, be intimidating,” I said and hung up.

Tattletale was already texting Alec — and wasn’t that just a fun juggling of codenames in one sentence — probably to tell him to stay away, or perhaps suit up.

Lunch would have to wait.

“You need something like that snitch Leet has,” I said to her.

She nodded. “Do you think he takes commissions?” she asked with a wry smile.

I picked up my balaclava and slipped it over my head, then I went out the door with helmet in hand.

* * *

Being an emissary to white supremacists made me consider a few things about my appearance. I used melanin as a second costume. My quote-unquote original skin-tone was pale. On one hand, I would be giving away my Stranger-ability, but on the other they might be more inclined to consider me respectable.

I turned the corner and saw the length of Hamil street. A half-block or so outside the perimeter we had subtly indicated with our tags, stood a group of men. At this distance, it was difficult to tell how many, but at least a dozen.

They had known exactly where to come — the best way to lay claim to territory was ultimately through the internet. It had only been ninety minutes since we had finished tagging; and there was little chance anyone had yet noticed the tags we had placed, even though some of them were conspicuously far off the ground, courtesy Bitch and the dogs’ ability to climb the walls of buildings.

No, I had posted me a little thread in: a section of map, and a photo of a tag, with the message:

> We want some peace and quiet, so take your business elsewhere.
> 
> There will be no competition from us — we don’t deal, we don’t pimp.
> 
> We’ll bounce dealers and pimps. No safe haven for gang members.
> 
> You know what we did to the ABB.
> 
> — The Undersiders

In the following minutes, several people had commented. It was more or less a customary level of interaction with the public by now, given the five video posts I had already made. There were appeals to the beard admins’ authority and legality in general — I hadn’t explicitly stated that I was claiming turf, and the rules more or less had a loophole to allow for stuff like this; essentially a public service announcement.

The rest of the comments were either fans, or people realizing that this meant our little two by three blocks would now be a relative safe haven.

And of course, those weren’t the only ones who read my posts; apparently the Empire had someone to monitor the news feeds as well.

On the roofs, I saw the dogs. Bitch on one, Grue on another. Their presence was a threat in itself, while I calmly walked down the length of the street. I spotted the Empire cape in question — a costume of white in white in white. Balaclava, hoodie, track pants, knives. Alabaster — one of the most impressive regenerators around.

They spotted me, and Alabaster stepped forward, while the thugs stood wary. Walking to them was a nice gesture — it made them wait. I finally reached the group and stopped a dozen yards from them.

“Hello,” I said. “You’re with the Empire.”

“Yep,” Alabaster said. “You seem formal, so here goes: we’re here about your claim. This is some nice territory, and we’re sorry to see it go.”

“You won’t be losing any business,” I said. “Put your dealers on the next street corner over if you must.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s not the issue. If we give in, it makes us seem weak; and this is a good spot for safe houses — I assume you guys have one here, somewhere. Then there’s the issue of Hellhound hitting up Hookwolf’s dogfighting business.”

Alabaster was apparently a smart man.

“You can spin it to appear magnanimous. Grant the bank-robbers who took down the top of ABB a sliver to call their own,” I said. “As for the dog-fighting. You guys hate niggers, Jews, ’spics, gooks, gays, degenerates, and so on. Bitch hates dog abusers. Given the amount of territory you guys hold now, the Bay is not a safe haven for anyone you hate. Given that Bitch exists, the Bay is not a safe haven for dog-fighting.” The slurs were ugly on my lips, but it was a good way to play him.

Alabaster thought this over. “I’ll pass it on to Kaiser, see what he says. Hookwolf isn’t going to be happy.”

“We don’t want any trouble, just some peace and quiet,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.

“Is it true that if I put a bullet through your heart, you’ll be back up in a few seconds?” I asked, just to knock him for a spin.

He hesitated. “Are you threatening us or something?”

“Nah,” I said. “Just curious. I’m carrying around a hundred and fifty bullets, and I like doing arithmetic.” I patted the spare magazines for my SMG. “Always sizing up opponents — you know how it is.”

“Piss off,” he said. “You’ll hear from us.” Then he turned and left.


	51. ה

I spent the remainder of the day going door to door, looking for hideouts — something Tattletale could have done faster, but we were taxing her power enough as was. I searched through building after building, walking through grimy hallways of apartment buildings, smelling the air for the aromas of drugs, looking for signs of brothels, or gang safe houses.

There wasn’t much.

* * *

I hammered my fist against the offending door. There’d been Merchant gang-tags on the building, and there was little doubt: this place was a safe house.

There was no response.

“If you don’t open this door, I’m gonna blow the lock and kick it open!” I yelled.

Someone scrambled inside — perhaps knocking over a chair. I heard a gun being cocked.

“What the fuck do you want?!” it came from the other side.

“This is my turf,” I said. “I’m evicting you.”

“Fuck you, bitch! ‘Your’ turf? Fuck off.”

The shotgun had a four round magazine, which left something to be desired. With four loads of beanbag in it, I manually loaded a breaching round — a round with a clump of wax and lead dust in lieu of a projectile, designed to disintigrate on impact but still deliver considerable force.

The blast was, as always, deafeningly loud. The locking mechanism disintigrated, and I kicked the door full force and cycled the action at the same time. The chain on the door snapped, and the door collided with the guy I’d spoken to, who stumbled forwards with a yelp.

Past him, in the living room, stood a round table bedecked in cash, drugs, beer cans and takeout boxes. Sitting by said talbe was another thug, who quickly stood and reached for a gun tucked in his waistband. I shot him in the arm at eight yards — rubber bullets.

The guy I had bashed with the door recieved a well-placed kick in the rear, sending him sprawling. I picked up his gun in passing.

“Leave,” I said, in a commanding voice.

* * *

Evening fell, and things mellowed out in our part of town. Tattletale reported that the Empire wasn’t going to challenge our claim, and we packed up our forward base in the apartment building basement.

The ABB was dissolving and Merchants were losing every engagement they took. Before long, the Empire would own the underworld.

Lisa, Alec and Rachel hunkered down and ordered Italian, and Brian and I took off together, making a detour to the place I had stashed my clothes earlier in the day near the school.

The first thing I texted Dad was:

> 
>         gang war mellowing out. i'm safe. spending the night with brian.
>       

We rode the bus uptown, to Brian’s flat.

“What does your dad think of us?” Brian asked me.

“Haven’t asked,” I said. “Honestly, he’s more concerned that I take care of myself than what sort of people I spend my time with. It’s…” I hesitated. “My Mom died in a car accident a few years back.”

“Condolences,” he said.

“Thanks. Why do you wanna know about my dad, are you thinking of doing a meet-the-parents thing?”

Brian shrugged. “You probably wouldn’t wanna meet mine. You might run into my sister, though.”

I nodded.

* * *

The wound on my hip was healing smoothly. I changed the bandage while Brian cooked us french toast for dinner. Repair was already setting in, sped along by my power.

There was a very real difference between the ordinary healing process and then genuine regeneration. Ordinary healing first increased blodflow to the affected area, causing inflamaton. Then it filled the space of the injury with fresh tissue in a haphazard mannner — mostly connective tissue. Finally, a reconstitution of original tissue function would occur. It was slow, inexact, and often detrimental.

My power allowed genuine regeneration — using my control as a scaffold, I could force tissue together, force cells in the wound to revert to stem cells, and genuinely regrow lost tissue. Scarring served to protect by toughening tissue, often to the detriment of blood flow, but I had already increased the collagen density in most of my tissues to make myself more resillient.

Regeneration was a power in and off itself — the only part of ordinary humans that could exhibit genuine regneeration was the liver.

More worrying, in terms of injury, was the numerous microfractures and microlacerations I had incurred when fighting Velocity. Hotwiring my muscles allowed me to bypass the hard limits of muscles; most were limited by neurological mechanisms to begin with, which only abated with adrenaline. But even so, there were limits imposed by how fast nerve signals activated the muscles themselves.

I could make muscle fibers contract at maximal power using singals that, if I didn’t know better, traveled at the speed of light, and affected the whole length of the muscle fiber.

My fiasco with Velocity had also taught me more prudence. I’d brought my lightweight costume and my utility belt, but substituted the polymer knuckle duster for two trench knives and two foldable batons; and I’d brought a pistol.

The evening news focused on the conflicts through the day, especially Oni Lee’s bombing run. Over a hundred people had been injured, twenty confirmed dead. The casualties of the gang war were estimated to be in the low hundreds already as well. ABB was officially done for. No mention of us.

Brian slid a plate in front of me.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Everything.”

We ate, and I thought about the next step: how to deal with the Empire. They would own the city by the end of the week. Sure, external villains would step up and try to muscle in, and the Merchants would enjoy an even larger share of members now that they were the only alternative to the white supremacists.

Had I made a mistake by serving them Brockton Bay on a silver platter? They outnumbered us three to one, with much more powerful capes. On the other hand, there seemed to be consensus with the others that if worst came to worst, we’d ally with the Protectorate.

My worries about the next step would turn out to be unneccesary. At one o’clock in the morning, someone took the first step for us.


	52. ו

I was rudely awoken — even though I didn’t need sleep, it too nice to pass up when Brian was there to hold me — by my phone. Lisa was calling.

“Hello?” I said, already expunging the neurochemical sleepiness from my brain.

“Taylor, get your asses down here right now,” she said in a hushed voice.

With a thought, I kicked my entire glandular system into overdrive, turning myself from drowsy to razor-like alertness in under three seconds. I shook Brian hard. “Tell me what happened.”

“Don’t have time. Check your e-mail. Or PhO.”

We all had cape e-mail accounts. I leapt out of bed and stormed into the living room. “Brian! Costume! Now!” I yelled. On my way to my backpack, I hit the power button on his laptop, putting it through the boot cycle.

Brian stumbled out of the bedroom.

“Drink water to wake quicker,” I said.

I was already in my clothes when the computer was ready to use. Internet proxy, browser, web mail.

My eyes went wide. There, in my inbox, was a perfectly innocent message, with a CC-list of over five thousand addresses. The subject line was brief and informative:

> 
>         complete personal info of all Empire 88 capes
>       

The message body was a dozen links to various peer-to-peer sharing services and download mirrors. That wasn’t the worst bit. The worst bit was the final part of the message.

> 
>         --- Para Bellum & The Undersiders
>       

And below it was a picture of myself in costume, and the others — expertly manipulated. We had never posed like that.

It was a frame-job. It would take me half an hour to try and put an identity to the perpetrator, and I was sure Lisa already knew.

Not wanting to download it, I navigated to PhO. The News ▶ Events ▶ America ▶ New England board was ablaze. The entirety of the documents tallied upwards of a dozen gigabytes. Everything was there — correlations of the absences of Krieg and the annual private vacations of his supposed alter-ego. The nine-month absence of Purity and the birth date of her alter-ego’s daughter.

Kaiser was Max Anders, the CEO of Medhall. Everything was there. I summarized the situation to Brian, who went pale. I texted Lisa.

> 
>         you already know who's behind it. tell me.
>       

The other half of the threads discussed Para Bellum. Correlations were drawn between my escalation of violence, widespread use of guns, intimidation methods and generally subtly breaking the “rules,” and then this latest development.

Capes didn’t use guns, capes didn’t kneecap without asking questions, capes didn’t strip-search other capes. Never mind my ladylike conduct of handling hostages, my pivotal role in saving the city from Bakuda’s impending rampage, or my reasonable demeanor in my vlogs. Never mind that this move made zero sense from a strategic point of view and that people had been theorizing I was at least a Thinker 3 just a day ago.

I wanted to write six thousand words on why they were wrong. I wanted to get whoever was responsible. But first I had to make sure we weren’t murdered. Damage control was the first priority, so I slipped on my balaclava and my shirt with the striped sleeves, and positioned myself against a white wall. I turned on the webcam, making sure nothing was in view to identify where I was filming from.

“It wasn’t us. We’re being framed. You have my word.”

That was all. I scrubbed the video file of metadata and uploaded it through my usual channels, then made a PhO post of it. So long as I didn’t know who was behind it, I didn’t want to make explicit my plans of messing them up.

My phone pinged.

> 
>         The Boss. I helped him compile a little of it. This is his way of firing us.
>       

And then the pieces fell into place. The fact that I couldn’t reach my contact, the convenient timing of it all — coinciding with us claiming territory which made our location obvious, he had probably started some rumours too. I was an agitator, an agent of chaos, perverting the team towards heroism, escalating conflicts too fast and too hard, and now he was getting rid of me.

> 
>         tell me who he is.
>       

Brian was dressed and almost ready to go when I received an answer.

> 
>         Coil.
>       

Single parahuman at the head of mercenary organization. A non-entity in my book up until now; I had pegged him for a Thinker or Tinker, and in any case a chess master. If he was bankrolling us, he had to have some kind of massive source of income, which probably meant Thinker — Tinkers built stuff, which tended to be expensive; meanwhile, the Protectorate had to employ a whole division dedicated to preventing Thinkers from destroying the stock market.

My next conclusion was even worse: if he had the money to bankroll us, he had the money to bankroll other capes as well. That made taking him down more complicated. My phone pinged again just as Brian locked the door behind us.

> 
>         The Loft is gone. Saved most of the cash. About 10k. We have about 100k in accounts.
>       

And the evening went from bad to worse. If I was facing off against the Empire, it would have been nice to have some armor.

“It’s the Boss,” I said to Brian. “He decided to screw us over.”

Brian stopped on the staircase and looked at me in disbelief.

“It’s indirectly my fault, I think,” I added. “My conduct has been reckless, and he most likely decide that we were a liability.”

The agony was apparent on his face. The Boss had been his chance at getting his sister out of the shit show that was his family. Without lawyers and a shell company to provide wages and recommendations, Brian stood with very little.

“Fuck,” he hissed.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He almost punched me. I saw the intention, and the tensing of his muscles. That was another thing Coil might have just ruined — my relationship. If I ever got my hands on him, there would be hell to pay.


	53. ז

We didn’t say a word as we made our way to the rooftop of one of the neighboring apartment blocks. We changed there, backs turned to one another.

Then we headed back to the street, and I took out a slim-jim and a pair of wire cutters. Grue plunged the street into darkness, and Brian jacked a parked car. That was one of the more situationally useful skills I needed to pick up, along with lock picking.

Once we had secured transportation, Grue set off straight for the docks. He was a very good driver, and I wondered if he had gotten stunt-driving lessons through the Boss’ resources. Coil’s resources.

“We’re probably going to end up fighting,” I said. “Are you up for it?”

“No. Maybe,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I reiterated.

“Shut up,” he said. “I can’t deal with all of this and then us at the same time. If we make it out alive, we’ll talk.”

We approached a police road-block, and the officers manning it were already stirring. Grue rolled down the driver-side window, then he pulsed out a massive amount of darkness and stepped on the brake. The cloud slid forward and rolled over the blockade, and through the connection, he extended the plume to cover the entire road. We drove slowly through the darkness and I felt a collision as he presumably pushed a police car out of the way.

Soon enough we were out and speeding again. A neat trick. The wiki had listed Grue as a Shaker 7, and things like this showed that.

* * *

My burner phone was an internet capable thing with a QWERTY-keyboard, and I slugged through the hideously slow internet connection trying to figure out what was going on.

Apparently, Purity had gone on a rampage, destroying buildings in our territory, not an hour after the reveal. She had made a statement to a news team that she would stop once ‘that which was taken from me is returned.’ If memory of the data dump served, she had an infant daughter. She was addressing us, and the Protectorate.

It didn’t take much to guess that someone had grabbed her. Someone who could be intimidated by collateral damage, and who hadn’t asked for ransom money. There weren’t many like that; my mind drew a blank — given her shout-out to the Protectorate, she believed that someone in a PRT-adjacent organization was to blame.

Unless of course Coil had infiltrators and they had taken Purity’s daughter to aggravate her. Tattletale shot me another update:

> Night, Fog, Purity, Crusader, Rune. We can’t escape on the dogs or Purity blasts us.

I relayed that to Grue.

“Shit,” he said.

“Yeah, I only have forty bullets,” I half-joked. Then I started texting Armsmaster. It was almost a bad habit at this point.

> 
>         nonzero chance PRT infiltrated. look into disappearance daughter of
>     Kaydan Anders aka Purity. -- PB
>     P.S. it wasn't us.
>       

“Who are you texting?” Grue asked.

“Armsmaster.”

“Really? Now?!”

“She thinks the Protectorate or PRT are behind the disappearance of her daughter. She blames us — hence why she is destroying our territory — and the good guys — hence the property damage.”

We rocketed through the half-empty streets and crossed the invisible, fuzzy boundary to the areas around our turf, still going well over the speed limit. Then suddenly, something collided with the hind portion of the car and send us into a spin. We clipped a parked car going forty. I could take the shocks — I wasn’t sure Grue could.

It felt like an eternity, but it was actually only a few seconds of mayhem. We came to rest a few dozen yards down the road, and I immediately put a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you OK?”

No response. He shook his head, and his hands remained firmly clasped on the steering wheel.

“Grue, are you OK?” I asked again.

“Yeah, maybe. Shit,” he muttered.

“Neck pain? Whiplash?” I glanced behind us, through the rear window. Three silhouettes were making their way towards us.

His hand went to the seat belt buckle, and unclasped it, then he opened the door. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

I mirrored him, unclasping my seatbelt and opening the passenger side door. We stepped out onto the road, and got a better look at our assailants. Grue closed his door, and I did mine. No reason to have a barrier between us and escape.

The middle one was easy to recognize — a big, burly, bare chested monster of a man in a metal mask. Almost like he and Lung both had the same lack of taste. Hookwolf. A shapeshifter with a deadly alternate form. By his side were two other capes, whom it took me slightly more than a moment to place.

One was a taller, muscular guy, though nowhere near as burly as Hookwolf. He did have the same style, with a beast-like mask, and way more exposed skin than was reasonable. Stormtiger. The other one was a young woman, built like a gymnast, in tight clothes, with scars on her exposed skin, and with her head encased in a mask that resembled a metal cage. Cricket.

Aerokinesis and a close-quarter fighter with sound attacks.

If the wiki was to be believed, they had made their mark in underground cage fighting where powers were fair game. Confirmed kill counts for all of them were in the low dozens.

My hand went to the pistol at my hip. “Grue, give us an escape route,” I muttered and jerked a thumb over my shoulder. Grue nodded, supporting himself on the roof of the car, and his darkness started pulsing off him, covering the street behind him.

“We didn’t do it,” I yelled. “There’s a third party involved; we’re being framed. You have my word.”

Boy was that becoming a catch phrase.

“Shut up, you ’spic,” Hookwolf yelled back. “We don’t give a fuck.”

So if they weren’t here for rightful revenge… They were either here for Bitch or just to wreak havoc in general. This left the next question crucial.

“Are you going to kill us?” I called.


	54. ח

“Nah,” came the reply from Hookwolf — his voice was a rumbling bass. “I’m thinking we’ll beat the shit out of you, then I’ll let Stormtiger here get some answers out of you.”

He would have a good time with that, trying to break my virtually infinite willpower and integrity.

The obvious implication was that all of these three were immune to bullets— otherwise they wouldn’t be so brazen about attacking us. I had a reputation for carrying heat, and my pistol was in plain sight at my hip.

Stormtiger had the ability to control air with great versatility. At his fingertips hung optical distortions, which I could only surmise were some manifestation of his ability — it was likely that he was the one who had made us crash. It was also likely that he could redirect bullets; but I doubted he had the reaction speed to do so if he didn’t see them coming.

Cricket seemed more like she would be able to dodge bullets. Even now, at fifteen yards, her stance was… Weird.

Hookwolf could probably just tank them. He had the Brute rating for it on the wiki page.

Grue was still pulsing darkness out — I hoped he was doing what I would do: extending it backwards down the road, giving us as much cover as he could. I looked at him, and he turned to me. I tossed my head towards the darkness.

As one, we turned and ran into the darkness, as it came forward to meet us. Inside, I tried to remember what the topology of the road ahead was like, and then I felt Grue’s hand take mine. We ran, and my whole world became myself, the street under the soles of my shoes, and Grue’s hand. He pulled me to the side, which if my map of the street was correct, steered us towards the sidewalk. Then a blast-wave hit us from behind, and I was knocked off my feet.

In the air, I managed to correct myself, and landed — still blind — in a roll. As soon as I was upright, I drew my pistol and spun into kneeling. “Grue!” I yelled.

The darkness around me swirled and dissipated — not as instantly as I’d like, but through the dissipating mist, I saw three silhouettes. One enormous, two smaller. I picked the one closest to my aim vector and in under one hundred milliseconds from achieving line of sight, I had squeezed the trigger.

With a pulse of my control, I intercepted the recoil, keeping my aim on target. Keenly aware of the damage it would do to my left index finger, I hot-wired the musculature in my lower arm, immediately retracting my finger from the trigger faster than the weapon could cycle. The action came back into place to meet my finger on the trigger once more, firing again.

Two shots, center mass, as quickly as my gun could fire. I didn’t wait to see if they struck home — couldn’t, through the still dissipating darkness. I snapped my gun at the other target and fired again; same procedure. It wasn’t nearly as bad for my arms to move a light pistol as it had been for my legs and core to propel my entire body. What I wasn’t anticipating, was that my target managed to move out of the way of the first shot, necessitating that I readjust my aim to track the movement.

Half a second hadn’t passed.

The darkness dissipated enough for me to see, and I saw Hookwolf barreling for me, bursting into a mass of blades. Behind him Stormtiger was staggering, about to clutch his side, and Cricket seemed to have taken a gracing hit.

That was good. With a smooth movement, I toggled the safety of the gun and threw it in Grue’s direction, hoping he would pick it up; then my hands went to the small of my back and I grabbed my trench knives.

Just before Hookwolf got to me, I exploded into a sideways cartwheel, out of his reach. My leg bones groaned under the stress. One of his blades raked me across the leg, but thankfully it didn’t catch on.

Behind me, the darkness swelled, enveloping Hookwolf, and I sprinted straight for Cricket. She sent out some kind of sound-pulse which blew my balance center completely, throwing me for a spin for all of a third of a second. With my power, I could sense the direction of gravity and block out the now useless sensory apparatus.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Stormtiger wave a hand at the oncoming darkness, blasting it away partially.

Cricket swung at me. Where she had aimed to rake it across me, I stepped into the blow. Her small scythe-like weapon hooked my upper arm, and I twisted into it and felt the tip dig into the back of my vest. With my free arm, I jabbed at her wrist and hit air.

She retreated a few paces, now short one of her two slashing implements. The gash on the back of my arm was almost half an inch deep, and had severed a few muscle fibers. I pulled the blade out and hurled it down an alley. With my power, I pushed the wound together and started stitching the severed fibers back together.

I sprung into motion, directly at her, and she retreated, hesitating to swing the scythe at me lest I capture it. We were roughly evenly matched in terms of reaction speed, so I stood little chance of getting a blow in. I looked over at Stormtiger, still clutching his belly. He was looking rather pale.

“Stormtiger, you don’t look so hot,” I called.

Cricket turned to look, and I used the minor distraction to lunge at her. She immediately fell into a sideways roll. She evaded my initial lunge, and I put my foot down to redirect with enough force to tear a ligament in my foot. Being already committed to her roll, she could hardly dodge as I landed on top of her. She tried the sonic weapon again, and I shut down my hearing entirely and clamped down on the vibrations in my skull to be sure. Her blade dug itself into my thigh, but that did little in her favor.

I raised my fist, clutching the trench knife, and brought the knuckle guard into her side with a sickening crack. The next thing I knew, a shock wave threw me off her and sent me rolling onto the pavement, breaking two ribs of my own.

“You two should get to a hospital,” I said, standing up as if I was uninjured. If I kept up this level of intensity, I was quite certain I’d end up dead, but it paid off to pretend to be a Terminator. “Because this looks like it’ll end up with at least two of us dead.”

Cricket got to her feet, and I could hear her pained breaths.

I looked at the cloud of darkness that took the entire street. Grue had told me that the darkness dissipated when he fell unconscious, so he was still kicking in there somewhere.

“I wonder if either of you can protect yourself from gunfire when you can’t sense it coming. Grue has my gun, you see.”

My initial intention was to give Grue a better weapon. The pocket pistol in his utility belt was a nine-millimeter and had a pitifully short barrel. Mine could punch through body armor — it wouldn’t hurt Hookwolf, but it would hopefully sting.

Cricket looked at me, almost defiantly and twirled her scythe.

“I’m starting to get light-headed,” Stormtiger said.

Then I turned and ran into the darkness. Another shock wave knocked me off my feet, and I landed in an awkward roll; blind, and deaf.


	55. ט

It was a gamble. I didn’t know where Hookwolf were, I didn’t know what the terrain looked like after that whirring blender of blades had been at it for the dozen seconds or so since he had been swallowed up by the darkness.

On the other hand, I didn’t know if Grue was nearby enough to provide me with fire support, and Stormtiger was still lucid enough to blow me around — I’d burst a lot of capillaries already from the shock waves.

With a baton in each hand for makeshift white canes, I ran tentatively through the darkness; keeping to the walls of the building, catching myself whenever I tripped. It was much slower than my sprinting speed, but I wasn’t feeling the tell-tale rushes of wind from Stormtiger blowing the darkness away. Hopefully Cricket and he were retreating.

“Grue!” I called. His ability to see and hear inside the darkness were paradoxical — he used darkness to dampen dangerously loud sound, but wasn’t deaf. The darkness was opaque to almost all radiation, but he wasn’t blind, indeed couldn’t be blinded by sharp light.

I reached the end of the building and slowly made my way past the alley until my baton made contact with a wall; then I continued down the road. Veering off into alleys was a surefire way to get separated from him.

Finally, the darkness dissipated around me, leaving a small clearing including myself and a lamp-post.

Grue stepped out, clutching a wound on one shoulder. His jacket was torn on the chest, but it seemed like his stab vest had protected him. He hadn’t brought his ballistics vest with him home, but at least he was wearing the military-grade helmet.

“Is it deep?” I asked.

“Nah. He clipped me with a wild swing, but I was able to get away. Your gun is out of bullets.” With his bad arm, he handed me the gun, and I checked the chamber and safety.

“Is the coast clear?”

He nodded in response. “They’re retreating. Good job.”

“Sit,” I commanded, and pulled my first aid kit from the pouch in my belt.

Using scissors, cut into his jacket to let me at the wound. A chunk of skin the size of a credit card had been ripped up, and was hanging by a flap of skin. It was bleeding a good bit, and there was a mess of leather scraps in it.

“I’m going to have to cut off the skin you’ve lost, and you’ll have a nasty scar. I think I can do something for the bleeding,” I said, “but you’re not going to like it. Bite down on something.”

My scissors snipped the connection and Grue hissed in pain. With tweezers, I removed the foreign bodies; then I whetted a tuft of cotton with iodine and went to cleaning the wound.

Meanwhile, I started rerouting resources in my bloodstream towards my salivary glands. With a thought, the imaginary scalpels of my power tore every contaminant in my mouth to bits, and my salivary glands went into overdrive.

Lysozyme was a naturally produced antibacterial enzyme found the spit of carnivorous and omnivorous animals. The amino acid imbalance I incurred for cooking up a batch that was downright lethal in concentration, was comparatively minor. The next bit was trickier. Carefully perforating capillaries in my glands, I let platelets slip through, into the saliva, guided by my power. I was blood type O-negative, but not by birth.

Then I pushed my saliva through my teeth, foaming it into a froth to activate the platelets, leaned in over the wound, pulled up my balaclava, and drooled a stream of viscous saliva into the wound.

“What the—” Grue said, and I gripped his arm a little tighter. Once my mouth was empty, I answered him: “Coagulant and antibacterial enzymes.”

He processed this while I opened a sterile bandage and taped it over the wound.

“Neat,” was his verdict.

“Now we just need a new jacket for you,” I said. From my utility belt I drew a small roll of duct tape.

Grue held up a hand and reached into his pocket. Then he withdrew a square of black leather, with lining on the other side. “I thought of that, when you were coming up with all these gadgets — costume patches.”

He took off his jacket, and I taped the damage together best as I could from the outside, then applied the patch on the inside, making sure the soft lining would be against the bandage. He put it on, wincing slightly, and let the darkness dissipate. I re-loaded my pistol, and we went looking for another car to jack.

* * *

The thing about capes going on a rampage was, that only a genuine pyrokinetic would be setting fires.

Purity’s company consisted of a lot of lethal people, who didn’t. Purity herself had a power that only conveyed kinetic energy — lots of rubble, but no smouldering rubble.

Finding her was easy — she was a blazing star in the night sky. She had no need to be subtle.

We left the car behind and proceeded on foot, and I dialed Tattletale.

There was a long moment where I feared the worst before she picked up.

“Status,” I said immediately.

“We’re OK for now. They’re looking for us. New Wave has responded, but so has more Empire capes; Krieg and Alabaster.” She spoke in a hushed voice. “What’s the holdup?”

In the distance I heard a crash and a boom.

“Ran into Hookwolf, Stormtiger and Cricket,” I said. “We’re mostly unhurt. They’re not.”

Tattletale gave me the address they were hiding at.

Within ten minutes of ducking through alleyways, we reached the block with the address. The path there, took us past some breathtaking destruction: entire buildings leveled, and a few people — presumably uninvolved civilian ‘undesirables’ or ABB thugs — sliced into ribbons and put up for display.

This was not normally something capes did: straight up murder.

But then again, this was the work of a woman who wanted her daughter back, with the backing of a band of psychopaths.

I was never going to be a mother, if I could help it — that seemd like a surefire way to go crazy.


	56. י

Under the cover of darkness, in the alleys where streetlight didn’t shine, the stealth aspect of Grue’s ability came to it’s own, and we made it to the warehouse where the others were holed up, hoping that it wouldn’t be the target of a stray beam from Purity.

Tattletale was hunkered down with her notebook, Regent was standing guard by the main door, and Bitch sat with the three dogs in the middle of the open space — all of them full-sized monsters.

I took a seat beside Tattletale, and Grue started pacing nearby to listen in.

“There’s more coming,” Tattletale explained. “The Protectorate is dispatching as we speak, but Kaiser is sending everything he has. This is going to develop into a full-sized brawl.”

“That raises the question of what we do now,” I said. “The safest option is to run. But that is not going to strengthen our position.”

She looked at me.

“We got sacked. The Boss is likely hoping we’ll get killed. Something needs to happen if we’re going to recover from this.

“First option is we book it, lay low, and build from scratch,” I continued and looked up at Grue. “That’s not an option for you — you need the Boss.”

He nodded.

“Second option, we go legit. We go out there, help the heroes out best as we can bag a bunch of Neo-Nazis, then turn ourselves in and bite whatever plea bargain we can. Downside is we don’t have good lawyers, and nobody here likes the idea — not even me.”

“You’re the one who came up with it,” Brian said.

“Yes, and I’m smarter than everyone I meet, and the PRT is a festering cesspool of bureaucracy,” I retorted.

“Amen,” Tattletale interjected.

“The city needs something resembling a functional Parahuman police force, and I am not conducive to that kind of thing,” I concluded.

“Bullshit,” Tattletale said. “You could become the greatest hero ever if you put your mind into it, and all you’re doing is deluding yourself in order to try and justify being a villain. You’re here because for the first time in forever you have friends, and you think getting in fights is fun.”

That stopped my train of thought in its tracks. It took me a full three seconds to file that piercing comment away for future reference, clear my mind, and return to the task at hand. “Tattletale, please don’t drop bombs like that when I am trying to save our skin and reputation,” I said.

She shrugged. “Or you could let me do the thinking. What you’re doing now is just listing the obvious to seem smart.”

“Girls,” Grue said, with warning.

I looked at her. She was stressed, and displaying signs of pain. Lashing out at me was childish, sure, but also quite understandable.

“Tt stop now, and go have a power bar and some analgesics,” I said with ice in my voice.

She glared at me.

“Now, please,” I said. “Next time you take that tone with me, I’ll slap it out of you.”

She put the computer aside and closed her eyes; then she started massaging her temples. “I don’t have any,” she muttered.

I reached over and patted her on the shoulder.

“Third option…” I began. “Is that we own up to the fact that we’ve claimed territory, and establish a power base. Show the Boss what he’s missing out on, and make him come to us on his begging knees.”

* * *

Kayden Anders had been away from home, providing muscle in a raid on the Merchants, when a team of heroes, PRT agents, and CPS agents had broken into her flat and taken away her daughter.

She was now, according to Tattletale, kept in a safehouse at the intersection of Dale st. and Emersons rd. up past Captains hill. So in essence, we could defuse a lot of the conflict if we could get that information to Purity.

According to the data dump, there was a faction of the Empire that worked under Purity — they had left with her and returned with her. Night, Fog, Crusader. If she gave the command, they would back off.

From atop the warehouse, with a pair of binoculars, I had inspected the air for myself. Purity, Crusader and Rune against Lady Photon, Laser Dream, Glory Girl and Aegis. It must have been a light show to behold, but now the sky was dark and empty.

The ground battle had then seemed to consist of Night, Fog, Alabaster, Kreig, possibly Hookwolf and crew depending on how close by Othala had been, and if she was close enough, there was a good chance Victor would be there as well. They would be facing the ‘ground bound’ part of New Wave, Manpower, Flashbang, Brandish, Shielder, and whatever Wards were on scene — probably Vista, Clockblocker and Browbeat; the heavy hitters.

Where the Protectorate was in all this took a little finagling to find out, but as it turned out, having a mad suicide bomber detonate two dozen tinkertech bombs around town did more than just delay public transport.

This of course meant that Purity was now either far too busy, or far too exhausted to actually care that we made a move. It had been so for some time, but Tattletale had deemed it prudent to stay in this perfectly serviceable hiding place.

An operation like this warranted refuge in audacity.

So the first thing we needed to do was hit a PRT blockade — it was the quickest way to get a megaphone and some better guns for me.


	57. י״א

We rode on the dogs, towards a location in the grid Tattletale had pointed out — a smaller PRT blockade. The operation would require a delicate touch. We dismounted on a rooftop not far from the collection of vans and officers.

“I’m going to call Armsmaster,” I said.

“And… Why would you wanna do that?” Regent drawled.

“To see if he’s willing to kindly ask the nice PRT officers to give me a rifle and a megaphone,” I said. “And maybe a riot shield and a baton for Bitch.”

She hadn’t been able to bring her shield and club. From what I could tell, it bothered her a little.

I hit the speed dial, put it on speaker and waited. “Any of you guys make a sound, so help me,” I hissed to the others.

“Armsmaster,” came the reply.

“Para Bellum here,” I said.

“Driving. Tell me you don’t have another supervillain hogtied for me,” he said.

I smiled. If I ended up doing that again, it would officially be a bad habit. “We might have soon. Did you get my text?”

“Yeah. There was no disappearance. It was CPS. I was in on the operation myself,” he replied.

That told me something about Armsmaster — he was not a political mind. If your organization had been infiltrated, the obvious next question was ‘at what level.’

“And who did your orders come from?” I asked, then continued at rapid pace. “Whoever ordered that raid was a moron or a malefactor. We’re about to go tell Purity where her kid is, and hopefully she is going to take Night, Fog and Crusader with her. The people at Emerson and Dale better be prepared to hand over that kid.”

He was silent for a beat. “No can do. Anything else?”

“Purity blew our home base, and we need medical supplies and a few weapons before we wade in there to help you bag as many Empire capes as we can. Don’t suppose you can help?”

He didn’t answer.

“Actually, never mi—,” I began.

“No,” he interrupted.

“Suit yourself.”

* * *

PRT agents were not to be trifled with. Most capes didn’t think so, but I knew a good bit about what good equipment and training could do — not that I had received good training. Lots of villains thought themselves secure in their power, and neglected to recall that PRT agents had the backing of the likes of Dragon and an organization that each year devoted thousands of man-hours on figuring out how to defeat capes.

We didn’t harbor suspicious that we could take on a blockade — Hookwolf and crew had apparently done so numerous times during the night, according to Tattletale’s monitoring of PRT chatter.

But I didn’t want to risk hurting people, and I didn’t want to risk some of us getting foamed.

We stopped in an alleyway, two buildings down from the blockade, and I handed off my pistol and knives to Tattletale.

“Are you sure about this?” Grue asked me.

“Absolutely not,” I replied. “If I fuck up and they decide to foam me, you come rescue me, and we turn this into a smash-and-grab; but right now we don’t need the antagonism.”

With that, I turned and walked out into the street. Calmly, I approached the blockade: two PRT vans, a police cruiser and about twelve people in all.

They noticed me instantly, and took cover behind their cars, many of them drawing service weapons.

“I’m quite unarmed,” I called out to them, and held up both hands. “Only here to talk! And if you take this as an invitation to arrest me, my team is nearby; could get ugly!”

The guy I assumed to be in charge stepped forward. He was a tall, white guy, wearing a vest and a helmet over a blue short-sleeve. The letters P-R-T were written across his chest piece.

“You’re a wanted criminal, Para Bellum — we’ve alerted command,” he said. “Protectorate heroes are inbound.”

“No they aren’t,” I said. “If they are, it’s to fight the Empire. They won’t have time for someone like me.”

His expression didn’t betray much other than suspicion. Six pistols were aimed at me.

“Look,” I continued. “If you can give me a hand, my team can get back into the fray quicker — you can be the man of the hour. We just want the Empire behind bars, today; honest. Just like I did to the ABB — I’m sure you’ve heard.”

He gritted his teeth. “Regulations stipulate that I can’t help you.”

“All my gear was in our base — I’m down to my twenty last bullets of my side-arm, so if you could spare a rifle—” I said.

“Definitely not,” was the immediate reply. I’d expected as much, but the outrageous demand would be the basis of

“OK, what about medical supplies then— One of my team mates need analgesics, don’t suppose you have any aspirin?” I said. He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t ask me why,” I said. “Has to do with their power.”

He didn’t say anything.

“And if you won’t give me a rifle, perhaps I can borrow a megaphone? We have some information that could distract Purity from the battle— Just aspirin and a megaphone, and we’ll be out of your hair, helping the heroes.”

“I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

Stubborn ass, he was— but to be fair, this had been a long-shot. Time for plan… E.


	58. י״ב

“We can take these guys,” Bitch objected when I got back.

“We’re not here to make enemies,” I said. “If we bust that blockade, we’re no better than the Empire — they’re sticking to their procedure, and I wasn’t able to convince them.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

I turned to her. “Yeah, but there’s power in that bullshit.”

“So what do we do now?” Alec asked.

“We go dig through the rubble of our old hideout,” I said, grimly. “It’ll be dangerous and I’ll do it alone.”

“Yeah, out in the open? Good idea,” Tattletale said, with no small amount of sarcasm.

I took my pistol from Grue and holstered it, same with my knives. I leaned back against the wall. “OK, Tt, you have exactly twenty five seconds before I kick your ass, to explain the sudden change of mood.”

She looked at me for a good long while.

“Fifteen seconds,” I said.

“You’re suicidal, Taylor, and it disgusts me; and your power burned it into your brain — you’re beyond help.”

I blinked. Was I? No. Every risk I took was well-calculated: a chance of physical harm… Well, in defence of others, the stakes were that much higher, but…

I went over my decisions that had led to this moment. Some guru had once written that when life ended up breathtakingly fucked, it could be traced back to one bad decision. So what was mine?

The video-blog was probably a bad idea. My less-than-verbal plan to turn the Undersiders into heroes by solving their personal issues was what had brought me at least part of the ire from the boss.

And when I thought about it, very few villains or heroes carried around lethal weapons, or shot people in the knee — as I had. Well, the Merchants did. That was troubling.

I’d blatantly taken a massive risk in fighting Aegis and Glory Girl, betting everything — well, my career as a villain at least — on my less-than-tested idea of faking death.

Even Lung; in retrospect I’d admit I wasn’t sure I was going to survive.

Hell, I had looked at the statistics of survival for villains once, compared to sponsored heroes. The numbers hadn’t even been in my favor when I decided against the ‘system.’ There was a pattern here. Way too many rationalizations in favor of… Something.

Had I really put something like that into my brain on accident? My power told me yes — it was faint, but I could trace the patterns of thought and flawed decision-making in my neurons.

“OK, I can see it,” I said. “And I can fix it, I think. But not right now — I’ll need time.”

Tattletale seemed surprised. “Uh.”

“I lied about my power,” I said, mostly to Regent and Bitch. “It’s not ‘regeneration’ and ‘strength’ and ‘being smart.’ It’s a consciously directed body-changing ability, and operates on the cellular-level. I made myself smarter on purpose — it was very complicated.”

Tattletale’s reaction was peculiar. She had put special emphasis on the ‘suicidal’ part. A good guess was that suicide was close to home for her. I filed that away for later.

I looked at Tattletale. “So, my suicidal nature aside, we need…”

“We don’t need anything,” Grue said. “We go out there, we’re careful, and we book it if things go south. Between me, Regent and Rachel, we have our escape, between you two, we have the two smartest negotiators in the city, yeah?”

I pointed demonstratively at Grue. “What he said. We can’t let setbacks like this distract from how awesome we are.”

“Hell, yeah,” Regent said, with no small amount of sarcasm. “Pep-talks!”

I looked at Tattletale. “Lisa,” I said, mirroring her use of my name. “I’m sorry for accidentally causing you grief. I’ll let you pick my brain if we get out alive.”

Tattletale said nothing, but her face betrayed a mix of emotions.

“We need to be sharp, Tt, are you up for it?” I asked.

She nodded.

“And while we’re at it, Rachel,” I continued. She had been displease, from the moment I had vetoed attacking the blockade. “We’re saving our strength, for now, but as soon as we’re not, we can go crack some Empire skulls. Maybe next week?”

“Words,” she said dismissively.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Man, is this turning into a meeting of the mutual admiration society,” Regent said.

I stood up again. “We have to,” I said. “Poor teamwork kills. Anything I can do for you?”

“Kill a Nazi,” he said.

I looked at Grue. “I’ll do my not inconsiderable best for your sister. I promise.”

He hesitated before nodding.

“Let’s go.”


	59. י״ג

Riding the dogs was nowhere near a comfortable activity. And I could numb any pain.

We made our way through dark streets, going fast, but not quite top speed. In the distance, the occasional sound of a particularly loud attack rung out. One would think that after almost half an hour of combat, the Empire capes and heroes both would be in a sorry state, but with Parahumans, anything was possible. Both sides had healers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a few of either side had unlimited stamina.

Bitch and Tattletale rode vanguard on Brutus, and I rode rearguard alone.

The last heads-up Tattletale gave use, was that a delegation headed by Kaiser had intercepted the Protectorate — how Lisa got access to that information through a smartphone on dog’s-back was a mystery to me.

We entered our territory proper, which had now been a battleground for some time, and for the first time, I beheld true destruction. Almost every second building was structurally compromised, if not reduced to rubble.

Quietly, I did the necessary arithmetic to estimate casualties. The result wasn’t encouraging. “This is horrible,” I muttered to myself atop Angelica. Grue and Bitch rode vanguard, and I rode rearguard. Gunfire still rang out in the distance, and my mind blankly catalogued the sheer destruction. I made a mental note to go look at the effects of Bakuda’s bombs.

Within moments reached the old brick factory, which was now a pile of rubble, like so many other buildings. I steered Angelica up onto the heap that used to be the home of three of my friends.

“Bellum, what are you doing?!” Grue called out to me.

“Just taking a quick look!” I called back.

There was nothing of interest visible — the roof had fallen and was flexible enough to drape itself atop most of it. If I wanted to get at my gear, provided any of it had survived, I’d have to enlist the help of the dogs. Digging through rubble out in the open was just asking for an air strike.

Purity had been unusually thorough with this one. Some of the buildings we had passed still had sections of wall standing. Here, everything had been leveled, and from the looks of the way the rubble itself bore craters, she had tried to literally level our hideout.

The only plausible reason for this was that she had know it was our hideout.

“They knew this was our base!” I called back to the others. “We need to book it, now!”

I pulled on Angelica’s chains steering her back towards the others. Already Bitch and Tattletale were steering their dogs back towards the way we had arrived and the speedy escape the open street promised.

And our Luck promptly ran out.

A dumpster dove out of the sky and Brutus only narrowly managed to dodge it. Above us, several other pieces of debris floated in the air, and atop one of them sat a cape in a red and black cloak. Rune, the Empire’s prominent telekinetic.

All of us made the dogs screech to a halt on bony claws against asphalt. I looked behind us and saw a curtain of white slowly advancing. Fog. And if he was here, his parter Night couldn’t be far; and with the appearance of Rune, there was a good chance the other fliers were close.

An ambush, and I had walked us straight into it.

My hand went to my cellphone, and I began texting Armsmaster.

“We’re not looking for a fight!” Tattletale called out.

Her plea was answered with a chunk of concrete, forcing Judas to leap sideways. It was likely Rune very much was looking for a fight. She was also using lethal force, so it was likely Purity hadn’t told them to hold back so they could capture and torture information out of us. Or maybe she had, but ‘holding back’ meant just not outright killing us.

> engaging rune fog possibly others. trace my call.

Then I hit the dial button and shoved the phone in my pocket.

“Grue!” I yelled and pointed. “Fog!”

Darkness was already pulsing off him, and soon it ran across the street like an impossibly light oil, coalescing into a wall — which seemed to work. Grue’s darkness wasn’t just smoke; being inside of it, it felt a little like moving under water. I’d really need to do some proper testing one day.

But I could only devote a fraction of my attention to that development — Rune was a much more pressing concern. The young shaker had availed herself of several thousand-pound bludgeons, and found it worthwhile to try and squash us like bugs.

Getting to high ground was out of the question — the dogs were slow enough climbers that trying to climb a building would render us so much chunky salsa, courtesy flying dumpster. At the same time, Rune could handily block us from advancing by arranging her dumpsters, concrete chunks and sections of buildings into a makeshift wall.

It was, however, a stalemate, as we spent a few seconds playing a gruesome, mounted version of dodge-ball with her attacks. The dogs were more than capable of dodging her attacks in time, and all we had to do was hang on tight.

But the stalemate wasn’t to our advantage, as more Empire capes were doubtlessly inbound; and I wasn’t quite sure what Night’s power was, only that her rating on the wiki involved Breaker, Changer and the number 9.

One the other hand, Rune appeared to be a moron in much the same way Kid Win was, and for once, I had no compunctions about hurting her. She was some thirty feet off the ground on an upside-down, empty dumpster. Angelica leapt sideways, and I silently thanked my inability to feel nausea. “Regent! Now would be a good time!” I yelled to him.

He reached out and made a pulling motion with his hand. She lost her balance and tumbled off the dumpster into free fall. Immediately, Tattletale and Regent were thrown about as a chunk of concrete forced Judas to leap aside — a retaliatory strike; it would have served Rune better to try and catch herself, but the reflexes on display were never the less commendable.

I admit there was no small amount of satisfaction associated with the sound of bone breaking and the follow-up scream of pain, as Rune impacted the ground feet first, probably fracturing a tibia going by the sound.

Then my world turned upside down, and — were it not for my power — white hot with pain. An incredible force struck me in the back, sending me off into the middle distance, and I hit the ground tumbling.


	60. י״ד

In an instant, I surveyed the damage even as I righted myself and turned my tumbled into a landing. Cracked ribs, slight spinal damage, kidney bruise. Whatever had hit me had also bodily flung Angelica forwards, and mangled her hind legs.

It had come from behind, it had been huge and incredibly strong, and yet all I could see was the back of Night, cape — no, cloak — fluttering behind her as she sprinted for Grue’s darkness.

“Don’t take your eyes off her, don’t even blink —” Tattletale yelled.

We had all been facing Rune when she attacked, I realised — even Grue. This could become a problem. I glanced back at Rune, who had used our distraction to discard her dumpster in favor or a section of the very road she had landed — and subsequently collapsed — on.

Meanwhile, the wall of darkness Grue had created seemed to be insufficient, as Fog was gliding over and around it — through buildings.

“— and stay out of the fog!”

My right hand darted to the holster on my thigh and I brought my pistol to bear on Night’s fleeing form, loosening a shot. I hit her in the ass — even thought I could just as easily have put a round between her shoulder blades — in the interest of preventing her from ducking out of sight.

The white mist came roiling over Grue’s black wall like a tidal wave in slow motion.

I sprinted to Angelica and Bitch whistled a command I seemed to remember meant ‘flee.’ Grue threw out another blockade of darkness, and Regent secured us passage from Rune at the cost of her dinner, or so it sounded.

We barely made it past the fallen rubble and dumpsters that had been Rune’s arsenal, when I glanced back to gauge Fog’s progress only to see Night halfway between us and the new wall of darkness. We’d barely had her our of our sight for ten seconds, and she was already on her feet.

Whatever her power was — super strength, stealth, regeneration, maybe even claws — it worked when people wasn’t looking. From there insights cascaded: she paired with Fog because he could occlude her, and she could navigate without sight, hence we were without our greatest tactical advantage: Grue’s darkness.

Then the light changed from dim streetlight to an eerie cold, overpowering glow from above, and for a split-second of indecision, I weighted the unseen horror versus glowy death from above — one that you never saw, and one that was too bright to look at. The irony was palpable.

There was a hollow ‘thoom’ and I glanced away from Night to see Brutus tumble. Grue and Bitch were thrown off. Bitch landed hard, Grue landed harder. I wasn’t sure who had taken the worse fall. Deep in me the impulse arose to immediately draw my gun and end Purity — a quick glance in her direction told me the distance to her.

Then a translucent rod was put in front of my neck, and I barely had time to put both my hands on it to resist the choke hold — as soon as I did, the unseen perpetrator pulled me bodily off Angelica, upwards. With all my might, I pushed against the weapon, and my assailant seemingly disappeared. I fell ten feet and sprained my ankle.

Then I heard Grue yelp in pain, and I saw a translucent figure with a spear standing over him, butt of the spear to his sternum. Grue was clutching his arm.

Crusader had joined us. I looked up at the projection that had attacked me, and heard the crisp noise of bone snapping, and the wet rip of flesh parting, accompanied by a guttural bark. I dodged forwards into a roll to see Angelica landing where I had just been. I’d taken my sight off Night again.

Angelica struggled to her feet.

“Purity!” I bellowed, without taking my eyes off Night. “I know where your daughter is!”

* * *

Purity gave the order. “Stop!”

Night stepped backwards, and I spared a glance around. We were scattered, dismounted and surrounded. Fog took up the entire street, cutting us off in one direction. Purity hung above with an ever-looming threat of bombardment, backed up by Rune.

Crusader was himself, nowhere to be seen, but his eight projections were here. Even just hum could have given us major grief — he had already pulled me off Angelica and disabled Grue. The projection above me leveled the tip of his spear at my head. I paid it no mind.

“If this is a trick—” Purity said.

“It’s not,” I replied. “You have my word. Someone framed us for your identity-reveal, someone with enough sway in the PRT to immediately orchestrate a CPS-intervention.”

She descended towards me — no mask, but the glow she gave off made such things unnecessary.

“Tell me where she is, ’spic.”

She spat the slur at me.

“Quid pro quo: I tell you, you let us go, you tell your cronies here to back off, we part ways, lick our wounds, and this doesn’t get any uglier than it already is,” I said.

“And how do you suppose I can trust you?” Purity said.

“Take Tattletale as collateral,” I said and pointed at my team-mate. “She can also help you, should complications arise. She was the one who initially divined your Daughter’s location.”

Purity considered this in silence. The tension was thick.

“Know this, though,” I said. “If any harm befalls Tattletale, despite us upholding the bargain? I will take it out tenfold on everyone in the Empire.”

Purity laughed. “And what makes you think you can do that?”

“I don’t sleep, no non-fatal injury can stop me, and I don’t have compunctions about murdering women and children in their sleep,” I said.

We stood there — or rather, I stood, she hovered — sizing one another up.

“Everybody, stand down. Bitch, control your monsters,” I barked. A side glance told me that wasn’t exactly necessary. Angelica could hardly walk, Judas had also suffered at the hands of Night at some point. Only Brutus was relatively unharmed — having only tanked one of Purity’s building-block-leveling beams. Grue was down, Bitch was favoring one leg, Tattletale and Regent were relatively unharmed.

“Fine,” Purity said. “Crusader!” She called out. “Make sure Rune gets to Othala. Night, Fog, dismissed.” She floated to the ground and landed in front of Tattletale.


	61. ט״ו

Purity picked up Tattletale bridal-style — being a few inches taller than myself — and floated upwards, slowly accelerating until she was a moving star on the sky.

Crusader’s projections dissipated, and Rune’s cloud of debris flew away. That left myself, Grue, Regent, Bitch, the Dogs… And Night and Fog.

The white cloud coalesced into a person. He wore gray, to match the color of his alternate form; a cloak to match Night. They didn’t give any indication of intending to leave.

Bitch and Grue were both in a sorry state; the dogs were worse. Regent was mostly unharmed, and I was starting to worry about how long I could keep fighting like this. I drew my pistol.

“We’re not going to have a problem, are we?” I called out to them. “Because the next one —” I gestured to the gun “— is going through the head.”

Fog started de-cohering. Night grabbed a grenade — smoke — from a bandolier and pulled the pin before lobbing it in our direction.

Black smoke.

Purity had dismissed them, yet they persisted. I was more than a little convinced they were going to try to kill us — either because if I was dead, I couldn’t carry through with my threat: eliminate the Undersiders in one fell swoop — or because someone had ordered them to.

Kayden Anders was Maximilian Anders’ wife. The only one who could overrule Purity was Kaiser. One more name for the hit-list.

“Grue!” I said. “Stop Fog!”

Grue reached out towards the two, and attempted to throw a wave of darkness up. The result was not encouraging. The flow was slower, and it seemed to partially dissipate around the edges. His power was dependent on his wellbeing. Of course. And he had just taken a tumble off a dog and a few strikes with a spear.

“Run! I’ll buy time!” I bellowed instead, and shot Night in the chest before she was completely occluded by Fog.

We did. Judas was the only relatively unharmed dog. Bitch immediately grabbed him by the snout and led him under Angelica. Brutus followed, and with a practiced maneuver, Angelica was lying on top of Judas.

Night appeared at the edge of the now rapidly advancing fog bank and threw another smoke grenade. I shot her in the head this time, but she just fell back into Fog and I lost sight of her.

Without a street-crossing, building-height wall of impenetrable darkness to stop him, Fog moved deceptively fast. I started backtracking as well.

Even as Regent helped Grue onto Brutus, Grue was trying to lay out a barrier — I thanked higher powers that he wasn’t stupid enough to try and flood the street.

I drew one of my trench knives and my mind raced. Judas could manage a trot, but the slow pace, was dictated by Brutus carrying another multi-ton canine. Angelica was growling at the advancing wall of grey-white death.

“Regent, keep an eye on Night!” I yelled.

“Sure— please tell me you have a plan here, Bella,” Regent called back. He was on foot, at a jogging pace, besides Brutus. Grue was trying to lay out a decent wall of darkness while not obstructing out vision and not really getting anywhere.

It would have been wonderful if I had, but I was wracking my brain as hard as I could, and pretty consistently I was coming up empty. Empty in so far as not taking unnecessary risks, empty in so far as all of us getting away unhurt. That was it, wasn’t it? The thing Tattletale saw in me. The fact that now, faced with an impossible problem, I was seriously considering something like this?

“Bitch, I’m taking Angelica,” I said.

“What? No! She can’t run!” she protested.

“No, but Brutus and Judas can. We split up. You guys run, I’ll figure something out.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Alec said.

“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” Grue echoed.

“Either they get all of us, or they get me. If they are looking for someone to torture, they can do a lot worse than me.”

“And if they are looking for someone to kill?” Grue asked.

I looked at him. “Then I kill them first.”

“How?” Alec said.

I didn’t reply. “Bitch, tell Brutus to shrug Angelica off, and tell Angelica to follow me — if you can.”

“If anything happens to Angelica, I’ll kill you,” she said, then whistled a command.

* * *

The steadily advancing wall of Fog had to be a psychological game. He was deliberately advancing with agonizing slowness, to incur a notion of urgency and stress. He had moved much faster when we were running from them, than when we stopped to put Grue and Regent on Brutus.

Now, the others had scaled a building and escaped over the rooftops, and I was left behind, faced with a cloud of acrid death and a monster that would kill me if I took my eyes off it. Two knives, a gun, and a giant dog, sans hind legs.

I took the chain around Angelica’s neck, and pulled. She followed, dragging her useless hind legs behind her, but we managed almost the same speed as when Brutus had carried her. Going into an alleyway would limit my sightlines too much, letting Night pick us off. Steadily, we made our way down the open street, buying time, Angelica crawling, me walking backwards at a brisk pace to keep up.

Every single way out of this mess would involve happenstance: if I could get a hold of Emma, and get Shielder’s number — I’d out myself to Emma, but that was worth it if it meant surviving… Or so I thought. Easier would be to just call Armsmaster.

My hand darted to my burner phone and I dialed his number.

The call went through, and I was greeted by a disheartening message: “This is Armsmaster, leave a message.”

“Emergency. Para Bellum here. Night and Fog are about to kill me. Pfister street,” I said, hoping he had some sort of AI reviewing his voice-mails.

I considered calling Emma — but no, she would have Shielder’s private number, not his quote-unquote work number.

I couldn’t call Tattletale, because it would compromise the delicate truce play I had built to keep her alive in the arms of the woman of mass destruction. Giving Purity information about my situation would amount to letting her know there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to follow through on my threats.

“Help! Anyone?!” I yelled, hoping there’d be bystanders — but who in their right mind would jump into a cape fight. Well, any nearby heroes, but still.

Fog was two dozen feet from me now, and still closing.

I dialed the PRT emergency line. “No operators available, please stand by, or state your emergency for recording.”

I reiterated the same thing I had said to Armsmaster: me, Night, Fog, Pfister street.

I’d promised Dad I’d be careful. I’d promised Lisa I wouldn’t do anything stupid. Phone still in hand and a dozen feet to the advancing gray wall, I texted Dad.

> 
>         i love you, dad. i'm sorry.
>       

Angelica whined, sensing my unease — there was no point in keeping it in anymore. I was going to die.


	62. ט״ז

I took a deep breath and held it.

The gray death enveloped me, and I felt cell death begin to set in in my throat an eyes. An assault of inflammants, clotting agents, caustic compounds and neurotoxins. I had to scrabble to keep up, neutralizing it molecule by molecule.

I heard Angelica yelp and wheeze. Then came another horrible flurry of sound — crunching bones, tearing flesh, and dull ‘thumps’ of blunt trauma, and Angelica went quiet.

So fast I could hardly react, a claw of some kind thrust itself into my gut and lodged itself in my pelvis, pinning me in place. An arm with too many joints grabbed me around the waist. Whatever she was, it was wrong. Off in every way possible. All I saw was a gray void.

Then another claw was slowly thrust through my right eye. I didn’t scream. It didn’t hurt. I couldn’t go into shock. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’d been stabbed with a dagger. It moved seamlessly through my flesh, severing my optic nerve and eventually hit the back wall of my eye socket.

A sadist. Savoring the kill.

Then, a novel thought occurred to me. If I could attack foreign bodies and toxins, why was this any different?

With a burst of activity — it would have been rage if my neurochemistry had time to catch up — I set my power upon removing the foreign objects in my pelvis and eye. The material was tough, but ultimately an organic polymer. As soon as I cracked the shape and composition, I started pruning it as if cutting flimsy cotton with pruning shears.

The claw in my eye was still moving. It was going to hit my brain soon.

I hit flesh under the amor of the claw in my pelvis, and my mind exploded. My power reached over into the gigantic thing that the claw was attached to. Much like I had felt in the early days of having my power: entirely overwhelming. It was over in an instant, and I knew — or perhaps my power did — everything about this creature.

With a thought, I grabbed hold of its alien nervous system and strange muscles and froze it. The claw in my eye stopped moving. Testingly, I mapped out it’s other limbs, careful not to make it jerk the appendages it already had in me — for fear of tearing myself in half. It was monstrously strong, lightning fast, and impossibly tough.

Accessing its senses sent me reeling with information overload, and I engaged a customized metabolic pathway to supply my brain with ever more energy. I was going to win this, and I was going to kill this woman.

I referenced my fairly accurate internal clock — barely two seconds had passed, and now I was in control. I bade the monster to retract its claw from my eye, then pick Angelica up and start running. It would be hard for me to describe how I moved the individual limbs and body segments, how I used whiskers and vibration-sensitive toe tips and echolocation to navigate; it was almost certain that I was much clumsier than Night was.

For brief seconds we accelerated under multi-limbed locomotion, and I planned my next move.

We emerged into fresh air at speed and the monster disappeared faster than I could fathom. Like an object disappearing in between two video frames. I had been prepared and in tumbling, I grabbed hold of Night’s form with one hand and drew a knife with the other, holding three fingers in the knuckle protector and my pinkie on the blade.

We landed hard, and I had already plunged the blade was already in her neck. I’d cut my pinkie finger in the process, quite on purpose. She struggled, trying to throw me off, and I withdrew the knife, before plunging my pinkie finger into the stab wound. My cut made contact with her flesh, and my control spread to her body.

This time I didn’t take control. After the familiarization finished, I channeled the whole of my power’s capability into her and obliterated every fiber in her being. My scalpels and needles pervaded her faster than neural impulses could tell her she was in pain, mincing cells and cutting collagen threads, pulverizing bone. Instant total cell death and bodily decomposition. Underneath me, it was almost as if she melted.

Without missing a beat, I stood and ran to Angelica, heedless of the damage I had suffered. The huge monster was sliced almost to ribbons, and wasn’t breathing. I spared a glance back at Night, and saw she was still a puddle, despite me taking my eyes off her. Good.

I thrust my injured finger into one of the wounds, and for the third time, a foreign body bloomed into my mind. The body structure was crude — lacking organs necessary for long term survival. It was even lacking energy stores to last more than fifteen minutes. No stem cells to promote regeneration, indeed no regenerative capability at all. Bone, muscle, energy stores, two rapidly decomposing lungs, a weakly pumping heart, a bloodstream full of toxins and clotting agents.

And in a womb-like cavity in its chest lay a small dog. I glanced at Fog. We had tumbled a fair distance, but he was already closing. I sent out my power once more, and de-constructed flesh in a direct path from the side of the body closest to me, to Angelica within.

I plunged a hand into the melting flesh and caught a wet furry thing. With a slurping sound, I pulled Angelica free, and ran.

* * *

Once I was confident I had lost Fog, I pulled out my phone and dialed Regent. Angelica lay in my arms, breathing shallowly I’d taken the time to clear her airways best as I could, but she had gotten a full dose of Fog’s clotting agents.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“Bellum here. Are you safe?”

“Yeah, we’ve found somewhere to hunker down. We can’t really move, though. You?”

“I got away by the skin of my teeth. Lost an eye. Night’s dead. Angelica is in critical condition, but I think I might have a healing power now,” I said.

There was a pause. “Shit. OK, we’re in one of my safe houses,” he said.

“You have safe houses?” I asked.

“You learn to have a place to crash when you’re on the run.”

My respect for Regent rose a fair bit. “It would be nice to get a breather,” I said. “Where is it?”

“In the boat graveyard,” he said. “I’ll pick you up by the old port gate. Have you heard from Tattletale?”

“No.”


	63. י״ז

I walked quickly through dark streets — something had taken out the power for a few blocks, and the most direct way to the boat graveyard to the north took me through here.

My power felt different. A new… Aspect of it, had revealed itself, but it wasn’t just a revelation that the scope of my powers were larger. No, there was a new modality. A second memory of a sort — a vivid data store of Night’s monster form, Night’s human form, the monster, angelica, and various iterations of myself.

Had I not restructured my brain, it might have felt as if it was just regular unusually vivid memories; but the information flowed directly from my corona, not from the areas of the brain usually associated with memory.

When I had some time to myself, there were several tissue types from that monster I’d like to incorporate in myself — stronger bones, tougher connective tissue, tougher skin, stronger muscles.

I was holding myself together with both hands at this point. The massive stab wound in my pelvis, and the matching one in my eye; a kidney bruise, cracked ribs, overexertion damage to all major muscle groups, a cut partway through my Brachialis muscle, microfractures and capillary damage everywhere. Most of my focus went into shoring up my wounds so I wouldn’t die from blood loss. A lesser part of my power went into Angelica, where I was desperately trying to keep the little critter alive — she had blood clots and pervasive neuron damage.

My energy stores were depleted to the point that I was keeping my blood sugar steady by burning fat.

My phone chimed. I answered it. “Hello?”

“Para, it’s Tattletale.”

“Oh thank god you’re OK. What happened with Purity?” I asked quietly.

“She got her daughter back. I’m on my way back to the Docks—”

“Regent has the others in a safe-house in the boat graveyard,” I said. “Go there instead.”

“Huh. OK. Sounds legit. What happened?”

Of course she could tell there’d been a fight. And she wasn’t asking whether we’d made it, so she knew that too. I relayed the events to her, how Night and Fog had attacked, how I’d let the others get away.

“I know it was a stupid and suicidal thing to do,” I added. “You were totally right, and I’m sorry.”

“It—” Tattletale said. “It’s OK. First step to solving a problem is realizing you have one.”

I was interrupted when something passed through my chest faster than I could detect, obliterating a rib, and half of my heart, before punching a hole in my sternum. Two more followed, reducing a good section of one of my lungs to mush, while the other clipped my spine. A moment later, a distant sound like a small explosion reached my ears.

I’d been shot.

* * *

Best thing to do was play along. I let myself stagger and collapse. “Taylor!” Lisa shouted.

First thing was to make sure I wouldn’t die. It was going to be close. I punched holes in my arteries and forged crude connections with whatever was on hand, from artery to vein, then moved the blood actively to compensate for my now useless husk of a heart.

“I’ve been shot,” I whispered into the phone. “Alive, but playing dead.”

“I know where you are; I’ll get help!” she said.

“Hurry,” I added.

It occurred to me that the worst part was that one of the bullets had hit Angelica through me. Where she had been in critical condition, the little dog was now dying, and I doubted I could save it and keep myself alive.

I’d have to apologize to Bitch, and bring her the head of whoever did this in a jar of brine.

I took one last snapshot of Angelica’s nervous system — in the hope that perhaps one day, I’d be able to bring her back to life with my power. Then I put the little critter out of its misery — shutting down all brain activity. It was less destructive than what I had done to Night.

Whoever had shot me, they knew how to handle a rifle. With a little mental arithmetic, I calculated the range to be on the order of two-hundred yards. It had been my own fault for walking in the street instead of keeping to alleys. The tight clustering indicated an experienced marksman and low-caliber rounds, meaning it hadn’t been a sniper rifle, or even a battle rifle. Someone had shot me a two hundred yards with an assault rifle.

It was also probably the Empire. Hinging on my theory that Fog and Night had been acting on orders, most likely Fog had reported back to Kaiser that he had lost his partner and failed to kill us. So Kaiser had put some other people on the task.

There was only a few capes I could even think of that could shoot that well, and if you took away Tinkers, it was pretty much only Victor. He had some sort of enormous skill repertoire, according to the wiki.

He also had a partner, Othala. A power-granter. A much better team for killing a Striker like myself than Night and Fog had been. How they had found me, I had no idea. I took the opportunity of lying still to try and heal a little before my next confrontation.

No doubt would they want to confirm their kill. That was when I’d get them.

I hoped.

This was starting to look bleak. If I took much more abuse, I might actually die.


	64. י״ח

I heard footsteps. One person was approaching. Man, medium height.

He was closing in on my prone form, and time was running out. If it was Victor coming to make sure I was dead, there was little doubt he would try to verify signs of life. He would go straight to the kill-shot.

If he shot me through the head with that rifle, I would surely die.

I opened my eyes and saw the pavement an inch from my face, and readied myself. What little time I had gotten, I had put to good use. As much as I could, I had prepared my muscles for several bursts of speed.

On account of the spinal damage, I would have to control my legs with my power anyway.

With a burst of motion I drew my pistol and turned my head to aim. It was Victor, as I had suspected. Black breastplate and red shirt, black pants, and a featureless, yet menacing grey mask.

He was raising his rifle to bear on me even as I aimed at it. That was the first thing to do: make sure he couldn’t shoot me again. I pulled the trigger, and an armor-piercing slug tore through vital parts of his gun.

Victor responded, not by dodging, but by pulling another weapon; a pistol. Was he not worried I was going to put two shots in his center mass? The pistol was a smaller target, but I still hit it. Then I shot him twice in the chest — breastplate be damned, with this caliber, my handgun could shoot through half an inch of steel.

He didn’t respond in the way one might expect — a rapid cessation of vital bodily functions — but instead continued towards me. His amor must be Tinker-made. I shot him in the thigh instead, but he kept walking.

Invulnerability? Othala had granted him invulnerability. He threw the pistol aside, and began closing the distance to mêlée. Two could play that game. So far as I understood, Othala could only grant one power at a time — the info on famous villains was usually pretty good. There was also speculation on a time limit.

And I had my own ideas on how to defeat her power.

* * *

He came at me with his bare hands. I’d drawn my knives.

“You can’t fight me,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Did Kaiser send you to take me out?” I rasped.

He didn’t reply. He entered my range and I leveled a bone-breaking strike at his sternum. He didn’t even dodge, he just took it, twisting, and struck me in the neck. I barely managed to avoid taking the full force of the blow.

He was good. Too good. If I tried to fight him with human skill, he would destroy me.

I bore my power down on my ragged muscles, and once more put them into overdrive. Faster than humanly possible, I grabbed hold of his arm and twisted with superhuman strength. He went off balance, twisting over backwards but only barely — his footwork was beyond excellent. Then I bore my knife down on his throat with the force and motion of a sledge hammer blow.

He caught the knife blade in his hand, but staggered from the sheer force. Not letting up, I kicked his knee and put a hand on his shoulder to push him to his knees.

He started laughing. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t hurt me with knives and punches.”

With a pulling motion I had never seen before, he managed to almost slip my grasp, and pull me off balance. In the blink of an eye, he took my legs out from under me and I hit the ground hard.

He retreated and I did a kip-up.

“You’re pretty good for someone who just took three rounds to the chest. What’s your gimmick, are you immortal?”

I didn’t reply.

“Guess we’re going to find out.”

He charged me, and I braced — what he didn’t count on was when I tackled him right back with three times the force a normal human could. We collided, and my momentum won, throwing us once more on the ground in a tangle of limbs. This time I spared no time getting the upper hand.

He tried to get up and I leveled a haymaker at the shoulder I had shot him in. There was a minute pain response, which told me my suspicions were true. He was mostly invulnerable — but not entirely. I hoped that meant my power would work on him.

I grabbed his wrist and forced him into a backwards arm lock, face down. He could probably get out of this somehow, but I only needed a moment. I threw aside one knife and used my free hand to tear his mask off — no use in wearing it, seeing as his civilian identity was now publicly known. Then I pulled my pistol and reached around in front of him, putting the barrel into his nostril, and squeezed off a round.

“Fuck!” he yelled. “Shit!” With a heave he threw me off before I could stick my pinky up his nose to finish the job.

He rolled to his feet and massaged his nose. “Oh god I can feel it lying in my nasal cavity, what kind of sick bitch are you?”

I didn’t answer.

He snorted, harked and spat into his palm, then threw the bullet aside. Of course that was another thing he could do. He brought a hand to his nose, wiping it, then looked at his fingers. “Nosebleed. Impressive. Never had that happen before.” Then he drew a pair of wicked-looking combat knives. “No more playing around.”

I leveled my gun at him once more, but he moved faster than I thought possible and kicked it straight out of my hand. Then he dove both knives into my shoulders, so hard the tips emerged from the other side, and powered through, pushing me to the wall next to us. The knife tips bit into the brickwork, pinning me in place.

He had gone specifically for the nerves, no doubt intending to paralyse me. I let my arms slump demonstratively.

He had a sharp jawline and blond hair. There was a vengeful glint in his eyes.


	65. י״ט

“What are you going to do to me?” I rasped.

“Kill you. Although I am going to make you suffer first,” he said. “You fucking shot me in the nose, you know?”

“Immune to pain,” I rasped back. “Good luck.”

“Yeah, I figured. So how about I lobotomize you instead? I know brain surgery, you know?”

He drew another knife.

He couldn’t possibly be that stupid, thinking that merely severing the motor nerves in my arms would paralyse me? I could kick him, even.

He closed in, and went for my ruined eye. With one hand, he pushed the smush aside, and with the other he aligned the knife to stab me into the frontal lobe through the roof of my eye socket.

With a flash of movement, I reached up and caught his unarmed hand with both of mine, got a hold of his index finger and thrust it into my ruined eye. My power bore down on his skin and met resistance. He thrust his knife through my wrist, but I didn’t care.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Letting go of everything that wasn’t keeping my blood flowing, keeping me from bleeding out, or keeping myself standing upright, I tried concentrating my power into the smallest area I could, and broke through, digging a needle-prick wound in almost a full second.

“Ow?”

His biology exploded into my mind, and I attempted to reduce him to mush, much the same way I had done to Night, but met the same resistance. No dice.

With the same concentrated force, I bore down on his optical nerves.

“Shit, what the hell? I can’t see?!” He withdrew the knife from my wrist and swung it blindly at my throat. I let go of his wrist with one hand to block the swing.

Next, cut the connection to his inner-ear balance center, and he toppled.

“What?! Shit! Othala! Help!”

And now for the killing blow. I turned my power on the nerve clusters in his heart, systematically whittling down the neurological machinery that kept it pumping.

He clutched his chest and went limp. I let go of his hand and his finger slid out of my eye socket.

With strenuous effort, I pulled the knives from my shoulders, and bent down to him. I sliced open a fingertip and shoved it up his nose. Then I started tearing key areas of his brain apart. Notably his brain stem. Suddenly, the resistance went away and I promptly reduced his inner organs and brain to slurpee, then weakened the tissue in his neck.

Then I took one of his knives and cut off his head.

* * *

As I stood there, holding the severed head by the hair, I turned my attention inwards, re-starting the regenerative processes. I wouldn’t stand up to this much longer. If I didn’t get rest and fresh energy soon, I would start dying. My power could keep me alive, but all this abuse had led to increased rates of cell-death, and having to compensate for not having a working heart, wasn’t helping this. My own cells slipped though my fingers.

I tossed Victors body into a dumpster while I thought.

I needed to find Othala and kill her too, if I wanted to be safe — she might tattle to Kaiser, and he might send Hookwolf after me or something.

As I thought that thought, my power helpfully supplied that Victor knew where Othala was. I halted the thought, and re-traced the information in my mind. My power had read the knowledge out of Victor’s brain in my… I really needed a name for that aspect of my power. His ‘snapshot.’

I poked this new aspect of my power a little and found it also applied to Night; and even Angelica.

So, now I knew where Othala was. I rummaged through Victor’s memories, trying to think of a way to make her stay put. He hadn’t been wearing a comm device or anything — I thought he might have from the way he had yelled for Othala.

He did have a walkie-talkie on him, to talk with her. But if I contacted her, she would know I had killed Victor.

As I went and retrieved his walkie-talkie, I searched for a way, and found that Victor knew how to do vocal mimicry. I also found the true nature of his power. He didn’t have all these skills; he had stolen them.

And most saliently, I could copy them from him.

Downloading the basics from his brain, and supplying the rest with my body control, taking care to remove the rasping and wheezing incurred by the damage to my lungs, I spoke: “I am Victor.”

It sounded an awful lot like him, modulo the fact that it came from my mouth.

Then I activated the walkie-talkie. “Othala? Othala come in.” I even had access to his speech patterns and mannerisms. He and Othala used military lingo in the field, to obscure the fact that they were husband and wife. “Target eliminated. I’m returning to the rendezvous point.”

“Roger that,” she replied.

“And notify Kaiser of mission success,” I said, and began walking.


	66. כ

The rendezvous point they had agreed on was in an alleyway a few streets over. I waited for her there, and she arrived a minute later, brandishing a pistol. She wore a red body suit with light armor, and an angular, black symbol in a white circle on her chest — reminiscent of a Nazi-Germany swastika.

“Victor?” she called out.

I greeted her from the shadows, with a thrown knife to the shoulder, followed by one to the calf. Victor had been a proficient knife thrower. Thus, I was a proficient knife thrower. Or— I had become one, on the way over.

She screamed in pain and stumbled, dropping her pistol.

“Hi Othala,” I said, in Victors voice. “Bet you didn’t expect that?”

“What the hell? Who are you?”

“Para Bellum,” I said in my own voice. “Now; you have two options. Either you heal me, and I knock you out and leave you in a dumpster… Or I kill you.”

She looked at me. “What did you do to Victor?”

I reached down behind a dumpster and pulled out his severed head. “He tried to kill me. I killed him back.”

She grew mute with horror for a moment, then spat: “You sick fuck!”

“He killed my friend’s dog,” I said, and picked up the swaddled bundle of red cloth that contained the small corpse. I’d used Victors shirt.

She stared at me.

“So, what’s it gonna be? Heal me and live another day? Or die?”

“Never!” she spat.

I stepped up to her and she scrabbled backwards. I dropped Victors head, then bent down caught her injured leg by the ankle.

“Let go!” she screamed, and tried to kick me.

I put Angelica aside, and grabbed the knife with my other hand. It wasn’t sitting deep, so I pulled it out. She yelped in pain.

Then I stuck a finger in the wound and let my power spread to her body. I would have balked at torturing people once. Now, all I could think was that she was complicit in trying to kill me, and that she could probably make sure I wasn’t going to die.

“Perhaps this will make you reconsider,” I said. Then I activated every pain nerve in her leg, sending her straight to ten on the pain scale.

She screamed.

I let her suffer for two seconds, then let up. “Are you going to heal me now?” I asked.

She lay there, sobbing and whimpering. “Fuck you,” she managed to hiss. “You killed him.”

I touched my finger to her wound again, and this time I subjected her to full-body pain.

“Heal me,” I said.

“Never,” she managed in between sobs.

I touched my finger to her wound one last time, and this time I didn’t torture her. Instead, I made her reach for the pistol, and fire off a good few bullets in my general direction. I let one of them hit me in the thigh for good measure. Small caliber handgun, jacketed rounds. It wasn’t a troubling wound.

It would make it look like self-defense.

Then I made her pull out the other knife and toss it aside.

Then I turned her into mush, though not as thoroughly as I had Night.

* * *

Othala had sent out a message to Kaiser, telling him I was dead, so perhaps now I was going to get some peace and quiet.

On the other hand, I was without healing, and fixing the injuries I had — provided I didn’t get in another fight — would take a week. That was an unacceptably long time to be out of commission. Now that I had killed three Empire capes, they would come for me.

The only option left was to flee the city or find Panacea. I dialed Tattletale.

“Para?”

“Hi Tt,” I rasped. “Victor and Othala are dead.”

“Shit! How badly are you hurt?”

“I’m not dying, but it’s close. Where’s Panacea?”

Tattletale remained silent for a few seconds. “Plainsborough clinic.”

It was in the docks, but not particularly close. They were probably directing casualties there from tonights battles. I’d need a car.

Fortunately, there were several parked in the street, and Victor had been a capable car thief and driver.


	67. כ״א

I drove through the empty streets, well over the speed limit. The problem would be getting past the barricades that would undoubtedly be in place.

I dialed Armsmaster.

“What now?” he said.

“Para Bellum here,” I said. “I’m mortally wounded; is there any chance I could get a minute with Panacea until my own regeneration can handle it?”

“If you turn yourself in, sure.”

Predictable response.

“Hear me out,” I said. “Because I’ve had a rough night so far. I’ve fought Hookwolf, Cricket, Stormtiger, Purity, Rune, Night, Fog, Victor and Othala. Of those, I’ve injured Cricket, shot Stormtiger, Rune has broken a leg, Night is dead, Victor is dead, and Othala is dead. It was mostly self-defense, or defense of others; some of it was pure spite.”

He didn’t respond.

“What’s your record? How many supervillains have you put away recently? I’ll play nice, I’ll hand over my weapons, I’ll give you the location of the corpses, I’ll even tell you about the new power I just discovered I have.”

“Meet me by the barricade near Plainsborough clinic.”

* * *

I was met with something like thirty PRT agents and six cars. Armsmaster stood there in his blue power armor, a dozen yards in front.

I stopped the car a few dozen yards away, unstrapped the pistol holster from my thigh, left my knives, and stepped out.

“You’re not going to foam me, are you?” I asked.

“No,” he said. From what I could see of his face, and what I could deduce about his posture under the armor, and what I could hear in his voice, he was telling the truth.

I stepped forward. “I’m unarmed. Where’s Panacea?”

He pointed in the direction of the hospital. “She’s attending to the critically wounded”

I didn’t fully trust him not to jump me when I went inside, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. As soon as I got time to download more of Victor’s skills, I’d be able to give just about anyone the slip.

“Don’t touch my car, please,” I said. “There’s some stuff in it I need.”

“Like what?”

“My gun, my knives, one of my friends’ pet that tragically died, and Victor’s severed head.”

Armsmaster almost didn’t react.

“I’ll give you the full story.”

* * *

As we walked inside, I started explaining. The first time I told a half truth, I picked up on a miniscule reaction from him.

He was a Tinker, renowned for his preparedness. It would stand to reason that he had a lie detector of some sort. The next half-truth I told, I accompanied by a greater degree of control; making my delivery indistinguishable in every way from stating a truth I believed with the core of my being. At the same time I drew on Victor’s significant deception ability as well.

That got it past Armsmaster’s radar.

I told him that I had discovered a new striker ability — that I could do toxic blood-transfusions, open wound to open wound. I told him how we had fought, been forced to bargain with Purity, how she had left with Tattletale, how we had been betrayed, how I had stayed behind to buy time, how I had killed Night.

I told him how Victor had ambushed me, how I had fought him and killed him, then tracked down Othala and asked for healing, but had been forced to kill her in self defense as well. I gave him the addresses and locations of the bodies.

We reached the lawn in front of the hospital building and found Panacea. The hospital must have been filled to capacity, because extra beds were set up out here. I did a quick estimate and arrived at two hundred beds. Panacea was healing a patient in one of them.

“Panacea!” Armsmaster said.

“What?” she called back. She was wearing the iconic white robe with red rim.

“Multiple gunshot wound victim,” I added. “Did you get my flowers?”

She turned and looked at us. “What is she doing here?”

“Para Bellum here needs healing; her own regeneration ability can’t keep up with her injuries. She estimates she’ll die in a few hours without your help.”

Panacea finished with the patient, then came over to us. “Why is she here— she’s a villain.”

“I’m here because I killed Night, Victor, and Othala in self-defense, and it’d be a shame if I had to die of my injuries after that kind of heroism,” I said, cheerfully, and held out a hand.

Panacea took it, and her eyes widened. “How—” she said.

“Brute rating,” I said. “Can you fix my heart, spine, arms, kidney and eye? I think those are the parts that is keeping my regeneration most busy.”

I felt a wrenching with my power, as Panacea’s ability interacted with my own. Not only did she move and re-knit lost tissue, I could also see minor amounts of matter spontaneously appearing. Gradually, I lessened the iron grip on my physiology, as Panacea stitched me together.

“It’s a little difficult—” she said. “Your power is interfering with mine.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Can’t be helped.”

After a few seconds, she was done. My heart was beating, my nerves were reconnected, my eye was working, my kidney was no longer a bruised mess, and she had even knitted all my major bone breaks. Now my power could now attend to the numerous minor injuries I had accumulated.

“Thanks,” I said to her. Then I turned to Armsmaster. “I’m gonna toss my burner phone, but you can contact me on Parahumans Online if you need anything, OK? I owe you one.”

As I walked away, I heard Panacea ask Armsmaster something along the lines of “what the hell?”


	68. כ״ב

Back in my stolen car, I drove for the shipyards. I texted Regent:

> 
>         sorry for the delay, had to kill more nazis. coming in a stolen car.
>       

A minute later he replied:

> 
>         You're on fire. I'll be at the gate.
>       

The streets outside of the docks were actually not that deserted, and I had to stick to smaller streets to avoid notice. I rolled around Winslow to pick up my civvies, and headed north to the boat graveyard.

I might have gotten noticed, I didn’t care. I ditched the car still in the nicer part of town, and proceeded on foot. As promised, Regent was there.

“Took you long enough,” he said. “It’s cold out.”

We started walking.

“Sorry,” I said and hefted my duffel bag. “Had to get my clothes. How’s Grue and Bitch?”

“Grue’s in a lot of pain,” Regent said, without empathy. “Bitch is more bothered by Angelica.”

“And Tt?”

“She’s fine. Complaining of headaches, though.”

I nodded. “You? Are you OK?”

Regent shrugged. “Eh, I’m OK. I’m not hurt. Bit bummed about the Loft though. I liked that bed.”

“I’ll see what I can do about finding us a new place. How do you feel about finding and murdering our former boss?”

He perked up a little, and looked at me. “No shit?”

“No shit. He’s next on my hit list. Below him, Kaiser and Fog,” I said.

“What did Kaiser do to get on your shit list, besides the obvious?”

“Sent four of his crew to kill me,” I said. “Fog got away. Night, Victor and Othala didn’t.”

He whistled, impressed.

“Wait up,” I said by a trash can. I pulled out the burner phone I had used all night, and pulled the battery before dumping it.

* * *

The hideout was an old cabin cruiser sitting in a wooden scaffold. The hull was yellowed fiberglass, and according to Regent, the inside smelled of stale dust at best; but there were beds and necessities, and it was fairly spacious in the cabin.

The engine had long since been busted open, and there were holes and damages, repaired with plywood.

“How did you manage to turn this into a safe house?” I asked Regent. “Like, keep vagrants out?”

“I pay a homeless guy to live here and keep other people out. He keeps it livable and keeps people off my property, I pay him fifty dollars a month. If he fucks it up I kick his ass. He even has a gun.”

Regent was a lot smarter than he let on, sometimes. My first thought was passive defences — barbed wire or bad smells or bio-hazard signs.

We climbed up the ladder, onto the aft deck, and Regent opened the door. “Entrez, ma cherie.”

“Merci beaucoup, monsieur,” I replied. Victor had known French.

Regent tilted his head in mild surprise, and I stepped into the cabin.

* * *

Inside, I was greeted by a thick atmosphere of sweat, dried blood, and misery. Brian was sprawled on one of the beds, Rachel was lying on the other with Judas and Brutus. Lisa was sitting by the small table, with a laptop and a phone, looking worried.

There were a pack of water bottles on the floor. No food.

I pulled off my helmet and balaclava, and set my skin to return to its default coloration.

Rachel struggled into a sitting position.

“Don’t move, you’ll make your break worse,” Lisa said.

“Don’t care,” Rachel said. “Where’s Angelica?”

My face fell, and I undid the Velcro on my vest — now with three large holes in the front. I shrugged it off, leaving myself as vulnerable as I could. As good as plainclothes.

I picked up the tarp I had wrapped the gruesome evidence in. I set it down next to her bed, and opened it enough to take the little red swaddled bundle out. I sat down on the her bed and handed it to her.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “She was hit by one of the bullets that went through me. With the damage Fog did to her; I couldn’t save her. She didn’t suffer.”

Rachel took the bundle, and I saw the pain on her face. Brutus and Judas perked up a bit and sniffed, curious as to what their buddy was doing in a blanket, and why she smelled of blood.

Angelica had loved these two silly mongrels. She had known all about them, and so I did too, now.

Rachel unwrapped the red fabric, and saw Angelica’s little face — eyes closed, looking peaceful.

“I told you to take care of her,” Rachel growled, and tears welled up in her eyes.

I nodded. “I made sure to avenged her,” I said and reached for the tarp and pulled Victors head out.

Bitch looked at it. “Good,” she said.

“She was a good dog,” I said. “She loved you a lot.”


	69. כ״ג

“How do you know that?” Rachel muttered, still holding Angelica.

I got up and went over to Brian. I angled past Alec, who was taking off his costume in the tight space. Modesty norms were pretty much out the window by now.

“I found out I have a new power,” I said. “If I touch an open wound to someone else’s open wound, I can extend my power into them.”

“You’re a general biological manipulator now…” Lisa muttered. “Damn.”

Brian was in bad shape. I poked him a little, and he winced. He was sleeping, but only barely. Probably in a lot of pain. He was still wearing his armor and clothes. Rachel had been able to undress some.

“I tried to use it to save Angelica from what Fog had done to her, but Victor shot me and hit her through me. I couldn’t save her, so I made sure she didn’t suffer instead.”

“You don’t look like you’ve been shot,” Rachel said.

“Found Panacea. I was dead at my feet at that point — she put me back together,” I said.

Carefully, I undid the Velcro on Brian’s vest, and pulled it out from under him. He whimpered a little and I shooshed him, gently.

“Every time I touch someone with my power, I get their body plan in my mind; and I… Know things about them. Even Angelica. I know she was a good dog, Rache, and I know she loved you very much.”

I’d let go of my emotional control as soon as I stepped in, and things were crashing down on me. Nobody ever truly knew what it was like to be another creature, save for me. Dogs were… They were a lot like us. Analogous emotions, experiences, and memories. Through Angelicas eyes, I could see the world from a strange new perspective; and I saw Rachel for the loving and caring person she was.

Hell, I had liked the little critter myself; and Angelica had liked me back. It… Reminded me of Mom. I’d known Mom all my life, and when she had died, all I had left was the memories. This was similar enough that I was having a hard time holding back the tears.

“Taylor, are you OK?” Lisa asked me.

I shook my head. “I need to heal Brian,” I said. “Lisa, do you have a scalpel in your first aid kit?”

* * *

I shut off Brian’s pain, and put him in a deep sleep so I could undress him properly. The body image of him told me everything I needed to know for my diagnosis. He had a lot of bruising, and a couple of broken bones. His kidneys would start shutting down from the waste in the next few hours, if I didn’t interveine.

For now, I expunged all infections I could find. Then I undressed him and went to look at Rachel.

“Did you heal him?” Alec asked. He had taken a seat opposite Lisa.

“It’s gonna take hours; if a day or two,” I said. “Rachel, can I check your injuries?”

Rachel looked at the non-sterile scalpel in my hand. It had peirced Brian’s skin. I’d split my own fingetip open with my power. She held out a hand, and I took it, then cut her on the arm.

She had a broken arm, as well as a few ribs. Her leg had a bone bruise as well. She’d be more or less alright with a few weeks of bed-rest.

“Would you like me to make your pain go away?” I asked her. “I can also help you get some sleep. You need it.”

Rachel nodded. “Take a look at Brutus and Judas too, would you?”

I nodded, and started gently easing her to painelss sleep.

* * *

There were hammock hooks in the ceiling — two.

“I’ll take first watch,” I said. I’d taken seat by Brian, and had my fingertip against the small cut on his arm. He was healthy and well-fed, so I had something to draw on for stem cell production. “We need food and clothes.”

Lisa was still in her costume. Brian lay under a blanket in his underwear. Alec and I were the only ones with no injuries.

“Alec, do you think you could get us that?” Lisa asked him. From her backpack lying on the table, she procured a roll of bills.

“Sure,” he replied and pulled on a hoodie.

“Bring a gun,” I said and pointed to his utility belt.

“All right, chief,” he said.

He left, and it was me and Lisa.

“You should call your Dad and let him know you’re OK,” she said. “It’ll do you good.”

I nodded, and tears welled up again. I’d failed tonight. My friends had gotten hurt, and I had almost gotten killed.

“And I’ll hear everything you have to say, OK?” Lisa said.

I nodded.

She got up from her seat and fetched my burner phone and clothes from my bag, then sat down beside me on Brian’s bed and hugged me.

* * *

“Hi Dad, sorry for calling so late,” I said.

“Taylor, kiddo, are you OK? I’ve been worried sick!”

“Sorry. We got in a fight. I’m OK now. Exhausted but allright. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again.”

“I’m just happy you’re not dead,” he said.


	70. כ״ד

Alec returned unscathed with sandwiches, T-shirts in various colors, jeans, socks, and flip-flop sandals. It was a lot better than nothing, considering he had found this at two in the morning within thirty minutes of walking from the Boat Graveyard.

He’d even brought dog food and a stack of disposable bowls.

I ate by Brian’s side. Lisa and Alec hung up the hammocks, and Lisa took the one closest to me. In a quiet voice, I told her about everything that had happened, how I had essentially killed three people in cold blood — tortured one, even.

She fell asleep at some point, and I didn’t blame her. At around five in the morning, I deemed Brian stable enough and moved to Bitch, and started working on her injuries.

Around six, I crawled into Brian’s bed, and put my internal clock to wake me after one full sleep cycle.

* * *

Dawn had broken without incident. No attacks, no terrible accidents, no nothing.

I woke up, and estimated it to be about eight in the morning. Brian was still sleeping, but Lisa was up. The cabin door was ajar, and the ceiling light was open, to give some fresh air.

Lisa was sitting by her laptop, massaging her temples.

“Sorry for falling asleep on you,” she muttered.

“It’s OK,” I said. “Migraine?”

She nodded. “Beginnings of it.”

I picked up the scalpel. “Want me to do something about it?”

* * *

We talked for a bit, and woke the others around nine.

Alec first, to have all the able-bodied on hand. Then I woke Rachel.

Brutus and Judas both perked up when I sat down, and I petted both of them, before gently shaking Rachel by her good shoulder.

It took a while for her to stir.

“Good morning,” I said, when she finally reached consciousness. “Don’t move around too much, your arm is still broken. How do you feel?”

“Pretty good,” she said.

“Alec brought some dog food, and there’s a sandwich for breakfast.”

Rachel held out her good hand and I took it and pulled her to sitting. I’d need to find something to split her broken arm with, and make a sling.

“Help me outside first,” she said. “Gotta pee.”

* * *

Once Rachel was up and the dogs had been fed — she had scoffed at the quality and brand, but beggars couldn’t be choosers — I turned my attention to Brian.

His injuries had been a lot more extensive. He had taken a worse fall off Brutus, and Crusader had beat him up.

He opened his eyes after a few minutes of stroking his cheek and quietly saying his name. Alec, for once, held is tongue.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied.

“How do you feel?”

He blinked slowly. “Like shit,” he said with a smile. “Exhausted.”

“Any pain?”

He slowly shook his head. “Is that bad?”

“No. I healed you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re a healer?”

I nodded. “Slow one, though.”

“Awesome,” he muttered. “I won’t be useless for the next three weeks.”

“Yeah,” I said and stroked his cheek.

“You’re sad.”

“Overwhelmed,” I said. “A lot of things happened yesternight.”

“What,” Brian said. “Did you think you were going to lose me?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I still do.”

Brian smiled and closed his eyes again. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” I said.

That was the first time we had made that exchange outside of his bedroom. The others kept quiet — perhaps out of respect, but more likely out of awkwardness.


	71. כ״ה

It was well past noon when Brian was finally in a condition to walk by himself.

I fashioned a sling for Rachel out of a torn linen. A split would have to wait. She got a hoodie; as did Lisa.

The first stop was Brian’s apartment. I felt uneasy dropping Brian off in a location Coil knew, but Lisa assured me that after what I had done tonight; Coil would think twice before messing with us.

Lisa split off from us — again to my protest — to run an errand. Bitch headed off to do what she did, probably to take care of her dogs, and Regent headed back to the Boat Graveyard to fix his safe house up.

I still felt like calling up Coil and making threats.

Brian exhausted and aching, and most of all wanted to sleep for the next two days.

“You should have someone to look after you,” I said to him.

“And you can’t do that?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I’ll have to plan our next move with Lisa — you should focus on getting better. I’ll get you up to speed when you’re better.”

“I’ll call Aisha,” he said and pulled out his phone.

He dialed, and I was treated to one-and-a-half side of the conversation.

“Hey Aisha, it’s your bro,” Brian opened. “Are you doing anything for the rest of the day?”

I think I could make out something like “who’s asking?”

“I am. I’ve gotten hurt doing… You know. I need a little help with groceries and such.”

Aisha said something that ended in “— for me?”

“Pocket money, a tub of ice cream, movies, quality time with your bro; whatever, really.”

She agreed.

* * *

Brian went to bed, and I spent the thirty minute wait healing him further. Then the doorbell rung.

I checked the peephole, and saw the family resemblance plainly. No signs of distress on her face.

I cleared my throat and forced my vocal chords into a deeper register. “You alone?” I asked through the door, in Brian’s voice. They had a scheme — the secret answer was “It’s just me,” for ‘no.’ Brian knew; thus, I knew.

“Yeah,” she said.

I unhooked the heavy-duty door chain, undid the latch, then turned the key in the lock. The door had a good heft to it — steel. The walls were concrete, too. It was a real bastion.

Aisha came in, and I got a good look at her — she was dark-skinned, as tall as me, but more athletic than I had been. A pink-coloured lock in her bangs, stonewashed, torn jeans, a crop top, and bangles completed her aesthetic as ‘trashy teenage rebel.’

“What the fuck, you’re not Brian?”

“No,” I said in Brian’s voice, then switched register. “I’m just good at vocal mimicry.” I held out a hand. “Taylor.”

She took it and we shook. “Aisha. Are you Brian’s girlfriend?”

I nodded and closed the door behind her. Already from this first impression, I got a strange revelation. Aisha was technically my age, but it felt like she was much younger. It was almost alienating. Here was a teenage girl, unconcerned with the gang war and gratuitous violence that had dominated the last twenty-four hours of my life.

“Where is he?”

“Sleeping.”

Aisha seemed right at home, going into the kitchen and putting her bag down by the kitchen counter, then she took out her phone and dialled someone.

“Hey dad, yeah I’m at Brian’s place. Yeah, he’s right here,” she said, then handed me the phone.

It was a quick indexing with my power to know how Brian spoke to his father. “Hi.”

“Hey, son, just wanted to verify,” an unfamiliar voice said— unfamiliar to me, familiar to Brian.

“Aisha’s right here; I’ll make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble and does her homework,” I said.

“All right,” Brian’s father replied. “… Have fun, you two.”

I hung up and handed the phone back to Aisha. She looked me up and down.

“You’re all right, Taylor— can I call you ‘Tay?’”

I shrugged.

“Say, are you that Miss America chick my bro works with?”


	72. כ״ו

The question caught me by surprise. Lisa was right — I’d really have to re-adjust my notion of what constituted a smart person. It wouldn’t do to be surprised every time I met someone above average in intelligence.

“You know about his night job?” I asked back.

“As a supervillain? Yeah. I’m thinking, you’ve got the right height and build to be that riot-gear chick.”

“Not the right skin-color, though,” I shot back.

She narrowed her eyes. “Do… Do you wear blackface as part of your costume?”

I snorted. “No,” I said. With a thought, I initiated the melanin generation process in my right hand; I had now refined to the point where it took barely a minute. I held out my hands next to one another in demonstration, and Aisha looked at it first uncomprehendingly; then her eyes widened when it became apparent what I was doing.

“You’re some kind of shape-shifter?”

“Mimic,” I corrected. “I’m still getting the hang of it, but I can mimic a corpse well enough to fool an EMT.”

Another misdirection.

“And while I’m bragging,” I continued, “I killed three Empire capes yesterday.”

* * *

Aisha settled in front of the TV with a tub of ice cream. The fridge was reasonably stocked, but I decided to go to the corner store for a few extra things I thought was lacking. Dietary supplements, for one; especially calcium.

“Give me your phone,” I said.

“Why?” Aisha asked.

“I’ll put my number on speed dial. If anyone comes, you call me. And I mean anyone — your dad, your mom, your friends, the President. Your first action is to call me.”

She furrowed her brow. “OK, miss fuzzyfangs, but why?”

“There’s some very bad people who want us dead,” I said.

“The Nazis?”

“No, worse. The kind that has SWAT teams at their beck and call.”

“So, the cops.”

“No, worse.”

* * *

When queried, Aisha confessed to knowing how to cook at least a passable meal. I left her with instruction to do so, and not to leave the apartment, not to let anyone in but me or someone who knew the password she and Brian used. “I brought lasagna for dinner and scented candles for ambiance.”

Both of them despised both things.

“I’m going to go now,” I said. “There’s a gun and a pepper spray in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, behind the pots and pans; and a baseball bat in the hall.”

Aisha put the tub of ice cream aside. “You’re really worried about us, huh?”

I nodded.

“Thanks for taking care of my bro,” she said and held out a hand.

I shook it.

* * *

I came home a little past noon, and called out my customary greeting. Dad had the TV running, and I found him sitting with some paperwork.

“Hey kiddo,” he said.

“What did it say on the news?” I asked him.

He looked up. “Oh, uh… The Empire has been exposed. There had been a fight in the docks around midnight, lots of casualties, lots of collateral damage. The emergency services were still reeling from the gang war incident and that ugly bombing spree, so it’s been pretty grim.”

I nodded solemnly and took a seat.

“What happened?”

“We lost our main base, where three of my team mates lived. I got in four different fights, more or less lost all of them, and almost died. Panacea healed me.”

“Oh god,” he said, and pulled me into a hug. “You’ll have to be more careful, Taylor. Are your… Is your team OK?”

“Two of them got hurt pretty badly, but we’re OK otherwise. One of our dogs died.”

Dad pulled back and raised an eyebrow. “Dogs?”

“It’s a superpower thing,” I said and waved a hand. “It was a cute little one-eyed terrier named Angelica.”

Dad frowned. “You have my condolences. So, what are you going to do now?”

“Recover, plan our next move — we need to take out the guy who leaked all that information and framed us for doing it. Can I invite a friend over?”

“Are they a villain?”

“Only out of necessity,” I said.

Dad thought it over. “As long as you don’t do anything illegal in my house, then fine.”

I nodded. “By the Hebert name, I swear it. And; I’m probably going to have to skip school next week, if anyone asks, I was injured in the gang war incident.”


	73. 0

Lisa arrived in the late afternoon. I had been spending my time thinking and absent-mindedly doing homework, browsing news feeds and the PhO boards.

PRT had made a minor press release that the villains Victor and Othala had been confirmed dead, and Night was presumed to have perished as well; although the forensic evidence was inconclusive. Para Bellum had allegedly fought each in turn and killed them in self-defence.

The PhO boards were all over this, and speculation and ratings were thrown left and right. I was obviously a powerful striker. I was obviously a powerful Thinker. I was obviously a powerful Master. I was obviously a powerful Brute.

I decided to put an end to the speculation with a new thread, which I also linked in the speculation thread:

> 
>         Night and Fog won. I got away by the skin of my teeth, only because Night had to
>     take her sweet-ass time and savor the kill. It allowed me to discover and new aspect of
>     my powers --- my blood is a super acid/toxin that dissolves flesh... I think. When I want
>     it to. My powers are weird, OK?
>     
>     Victor pretty much surprised with a few well-placed high-caliber rifle bullets,
>     but he was stupid enough to get within reach when confirming the kill. I play dead better
>     than most corpses --- a fact which he forgot. I was dead on my feet after that fight.
>     
>     I tried to get Othala to heal me, but the dumb fuck liked being a racist more than being
>     alive. She shot me in the thigh... I might have gone overboard in straight up killing her,
>     but I'd had a pretty bad day at that point, and I couldn't risk she reported back to Kaiser.
>     
>     In the end, Armsmaster was kind enough to let me visit Panacea. That night, we worked towards
>     the same cause, and he was a good enough dude to know it. Panacea was a sweetheart --- props to
>     that girl for all her pro-bono work.
>     
>     End of the night tally of Empire casualties against the Undersiders:
>     * Stormtiger: shot in gut
>     * Cricket: shattered ribs w/ knuckle dusters
>     * Rune: broken legs from falling
>     * Night: jellified
>     * Victor: decapitated as revenge for killing my friend's dog
>     * Othala: jellified
>     
>     It's kind of horrifying that I killed three people to stay alive. Would prefer not doing that again.
>     
>     Para Bellum out.
>     
>     P.S. Kaiser, if you're reading this? I have bigger fish to fry, and you are probably wise
>     enough to not send any more of your people to assassinate me or my friends. Cause if you do,
>     I might decide you're a big fish, and you don't have a secret identity to hide behind anymore.
>       

That led to a barrage of questions, and I didn’t answer any of them. I looked for news in the Dinah Alcott case — none so far. No ransom, no signs of life. Her parents had stopped making TV spot pleas for her safe return.

The casualty ratings were still climbing, but it was estimated that the total gang war had now claimed at least two hundred lives, and almost one and a half thousand injured. This had to stop, and I was beginning to see how it could be: Monopoly.

If I could create an organization that was powerful enough to conquer the underworld in its entirety, I’d be able to keep Brockton Bay safe. For some odd reason Brockton had so many damn parahumans, and if the Good guys didn’t have to redirect so many of their number to fight the enormous parahuman organizations like the Empire, lives could be saved in other places.

For now, I had the problem of Coil. He had waved the massive resources he had in front of my nose, and then snatched it away, and I was bitter about that. I started downloading Victor’s not insignificant repertoire of computer skills, and set about prioritizing what I needed to learn in order to take down Coil.

* * *

I greeted Lisa with a terrible determination brewing deep in my mind. She carried a large computer satchel.

“How do you feel?” I asked her.

“Better since my headache cleared up this morning. Might need another dose of ‘painkillers’ later,” she said.

I showed her in.

“Nice house,” she remarked.

“Taylor, is that your friend?” he called.

“Yes, Mr. Hebert,” Lisa answered for me. “My name is—.”

I stopped her. Dad knew she was a villain, and thus, not to ask for such things — it was part of our… Understanding… Lisa picked up instantly.

“— Lea.”

* * *

I sent Lisa to my room and made tea for us, then I too retreated to my room.

“We’re taking down Coil,” I said.

“Obviously,” Lisa said.

She was already sitting in my bed with her laptop.

“There’s also the matter of making sure I’m fixed.” I said. “Ideally, we do both.”

Lisa pursed her lips. “Yeah.”

“First, we find out everything there is to know about Coil; and I do mean everything. You can use up to a quarter of our discretionary budget of eighty grand. I’ll relieve your headaches, and you can bounce anything off me if you need.”

Lisa nodded. “Sure thing, boss.”

“Don’t call me ‘boss,’ not when we’re taking down Coil.” I said.

“Yes mistress,” she said with a grin.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “And you probably know this, but given that I have access to all Victors skills; your’s too. Feel free to draw me for any electronic or in-person espionage. Or fighting, for that matter.”

Lisa snickered. “Thinker Taylor: soldier, bailer, rich girl, poor girl, villain, thief.”


	74. 1

Of course, the equipment we had available at my house was inadequate, not to mention tied to our civilian identities.

We hunkered down with each our laptop, and started passively researching. Having access to Lisa’s method wasn’t useful for myself — most of her research she did with her power in mind; and I didn’t have that.

What it did let me do, was know what was relevant and what was not.

So I started on Coil’s troop movements. He worked in subtle ways, but there was some information on where his mercenaries had been spotted — even rumours were useful. Over the next few minutes, I speed-read through the PhO threads dedicated to villain-spotting and pinned every location to a map.

Lisa cast a glance at said map and marked down the location of Coil’s secret bases.

Because he had that kind of thing, obviously.

Lisa had been doing preliminary work — compiling a list of persons of interest. She sent it to me.

“There’s PRT employees in this?” I asked.

“Coil had information about the PRT. Either he had a team of hackers better than me, or he had a man on the inside.”

I started compiling a list of Coil sightings to cross-reference against.

* * *

We worked back and forth like that for an hour. I made lists of available facts, Lisa added to them, I cross-referenced them, eliminating the impossible. We only succeeded in accumulating more data — at no point did our list of good suspects for Coil’s civilian identity shrink.

Our knowledge of his assets didn’t go very far beyond the rudimentary. He did stock trading through a shell corporation in Mexico.

“He is using the same banker we are,” Lisa said.

“And who is that?” I asked.

“The Number Man,” she replied.

A parahuman, no doubt. “And how has the PRT’s stock market Thinkers not caught him yet?”

“He’s a little too good at what he does.”

Of course.

* * *

When we had hit a natural stopping point, we took off towards a seedy little electronics store Lisa knew — for burners, disposable laptops, and everything else one might need to perform electronic larceny.

“What do you girls need?” the clerk asked us.

Lisa didn’t answer — she just started gathering equipment off the shelves. A stack of burnable DVDs, a pair of laptops, burner phones, SIM-cards.

“We’re going to break into the FBI’s mainframe,” I said, jokingly.

The clerk snickered. He was a twenty-something white guy, a little on the heavy side. “What— you’re hackers?”

“Yeah. We’re participating in a CTF tomorrow.”

“CT— What’s that?”

“Capture the Flag. You have to find a series of hashes and send them to the referee server for points.”

The clerk clearly wasn’t very familiar with hacking. Lisa was. Victor had been. Therefore I was.

Lisa was wearing a yellow T-shirt with a lightning-bolt design, and a pleated skirt. I was in a very tight black T-shirt, with quite a low neck, and purposely leaning on the counter. It was pretty much a surefire way to get a discount.

The clerk didn’t look at me. He was eying Lisa.

“It’s not every day you meet a pair of hacker girls, huh?”

He shrugged.

“Sorry to shatter your fantasy, but she’s not into guys,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s not— I’m gay. Are you two?” he gestured from me to her.

“Not into girls either,” I said. “If only.”

* * *

We ended up getting a complementary extension chord anyway. ‘Gays stick together.’

“Smooth,” Lisa said to me.

“Thanks. Where do we set up?”

“Little coffee shop chain I know. Fast Wi-Fi, the owner of the company is into kiddie porn, so I’ve blackmailed him a bit from time to time.”


	75. 10

The coffee was pretty good.

By the end of a three-hour marathon, we had gotten our hands on thousands of hours of PRT security footage — Lisa had lost most of her hard work accessing the PRT building’s internal surveillance system with the Loft.

Information security had gotten a definite boost with the advent of Tinkertech; but so had hacking tools. It helped that Lisa could guess people’s passwords much better than any profiled dictionary attack.

Now came the tedious part of correlating personnel records with the footage and our list of suspects.

We had also gained a preliminary understanding of Coil’s computer operations, but his security was a lot tighter — mostly due to much more limited activity.

“I can work through the night,” I said. “We should stop for today, you’re showing signs of mental exhaustion.”

Lisa shook her head, then in a quiet voice, she said: “Do you think you can do to me whatever it is that lets you not sleep?”

“Not permanently,” I replied. “Maybe a touch-up in the morning, but I’m not going to start messing with other people’s brains until I have my own under control.”

“Fair,” Lisa said. “I’ll go to one of my apartments. You get me some painkillers, I figure out who our mystery man is. You go check up on Brian, and use that big brain of yours to start thinking of a plan.”

“I’m not much for planning if I don’t know what I’m up against,” I replied.

“I’ll tell you what you’re up against when I know who he is,” Lisa said. “Do prep work, I’m sure you have a to-do list longer than your arm.”

* * *

We took the bus downtown, and I dropped Lisa off at an apartment that looked very much like the one she had taken me to on the day of the bank robbery, only smaller…

And now that I thought about it, that was only a week ago.

And conspicuously, I noticed one of the very same coffee shops in the ground floor of the building. Lisa’s apartment was on the first floor — but not directly above it.

She sat up the laptops and I procured my karambit. Lisa held out an arm, and I cut her, then put my thumb to the wound and made the connection.

She was already in a lot of pain. Migraines were not fully understood by modern science, but my power handily filled in the gaps with ways to make the pain stop — I rejected anything permanent and impeded the abnormal neurological and vascular activity that caused it. Then for good measure, I broke down most of the various accumulated toxins in her tissues, and quelled inflammation where I saw fit; essentially making her feel like she had just enjoyed a good night’s rest.

“You’re a life-saver,” Lisa said, looking more relieved than I had ever seen. “I’ll have a face and a name by tomorrow — might need to call you in at around two o’clock tonight.”

I had to admit it was uplifting to see her in her element like this. Finally paying back for all the anxiety working under Coil had caused her.

“Oh, and I have an e-mail address if you feel like sending him a threatening letter,” Lisa said, and my new burner chimed with a text.

“Call me if anyone comes snooping around,” I said.

“Nobody knows I own this apartment. Not even Coil.”

* * *

I did have a to-do list as long as my arm. I caught a bus back home to pick up a spare costume, change into more convenient clothes, and tell Dad I’d be out.

Then I called ahead to a pizzeria I knew lay on the way to pile of rubble that used to be the Loft. It was a fairly upright place — and they had my order ready when I walked in the door.

It was my dinner — even though it was barely six o’clock — and also an experiment. I ate while I walked, savoring the grease and salt, and generally reminding myself that I was alive.

Victor had — for reasons completely unknown — at one point decided to steal the skills of a championship competitive eater. So I knew how to put away a pizza in five minutes.

The experiment came once I had actually ingested all of it: my stomach contents were within the purview of my power, so now the idea was to do what my digestive system normally would do, but faster. If I could reduce a person more or less to single amino acids, I could do that with my food too.

With my inner eye, I watched the eight slices of pizza get turned into mush, as I tore every complex molecule apart until I was left with simple molecules: monosaccharide sugars, single amino acids, fatty acids, and a host of other things — vitamins, minerals, trace elements. All of this, I promptly pushed into my intestines, so as to not let my stomach acid interfere for too long.

My metabolic enhancements would take care of the rest — building sugar stores, storing fat, and adding protein to a network of nodules of my own design. Humans had no amino-acid storage. Intake of protein was either used in building new protein, or metabolized into energy; during famine, the body would break down muscle tissue. Not so for me.

All of this, I did while walking at a brisk pace. I found a suitably deserted rooftop of an abandoned apartment complex, and changed into one of my spare costumes: black hoodie with striped sleeves over stab vest, dark blue balaclava, red neckerchief, dark blue cargo pants, and some sturdy shoes.

Apart from the standard Undersider utility belt, I had a large karambit, an extendible baton, a pepper spray, and a stun gun. I didn’t expect to find trouble, but I would give anyone a bad time who dared pick a fight with me.

Especially since now, I was getting better at fighting by the minute, downloading several lifetimes worth of martial arts mastery from the late Empire specialist.

It had seemed a bit like overmuch caution at the time, but now I was really happy that I had all these spare costumes.


	76. 11

My goal was what remained of the Loft. I knew that the probability of everything being lost was very small; and the worker crews tasked with clearing up rubble hadn’t even begun. I was tempted to think they hadn’t been recruited, were it not for the rubble sacks and traffic cones that were already put up.

In the twilight, I took a patrol job around our territory perimeter, looking for trouble. The streets were empty of anything looking like trouble. Perhaps out of fear or respect.

Returning to the former brick factory, I started digging. It was a precarious and slow process, to move rubble unassisted and without a wheelbarrow — I wasn’t even starting from on end; I was going directly for where I thought our personal belongings might be buried. It was a good thing I had brought working gloves.

* * *

Three hours of back-breaking labor later, I had removed enough roof and brick rubble to have a reasonable picture of the destruction, and where everything had ended up relative to where it had been when the building still stood.

The prize I was after, was information. Hard drives, optical disks — any and all storage media.

I dug my way to a dented toolbox that had lived in the utility closet and found a screwdriver set; then I started dismantling the electronics — if the hard drives survived, I didn’t want whatever info Lisa had accumulated to land in a PRT evidence locker.

Her memory provided the locations of all the laptop and storage stashes. It took me another thirty minutes of rummaging through the rubble to round up all of it. A neat little stack of drives, and a lot of CDs, only most of them cracked.

The next things I looked for, were anything that could link us to this place — personal affects. Picking through the ruin of their rooms yielded a grab bag of knick-knacks.

The real prize, however, was my guns. I found the aluminum case bent out of shape. The contents, however were intact. Good grief, I would have been surprised if a collapsing building could destroy body armor designed to resist gunfire. I held my metaphorical breath as I cleaned out the dust of my guns, and checked them for damage.

Most of it was in good shape. I went down the street to score me a rubble sack.

* * *

Carrying around a hundred pounds of stuff on my back, I made my way to the apartment complex basement we had used as a base of operations during the worst of the gang conflicts just over thirty hours ago.

Lisa had chosen it, because the room had been locked with a padlock that nobody had opened in six months. Lisa had picked it, and the inside had been empty — it was just the kind of mysteries that plagued apartment life. Strange locked rooms in basements.

The lock was still there, and I picked it with a hair-pin and a screw-driver.

The room was in the exact same state we had left it in. I replaced the pad-lock with one of ours that had survived the Loft’s destruction with key intact.

With a small victory having come off all that labor, I headed to Brian’s. Provided nobody broke that lock down, I’d transport my gear tomorrow. I changed back into my civilian clothes

I caught a late night bus downtown, and walked the rest of the way through the chilly night.

As I walked, I thought about Rachel. I ought to check up on her as well. Finding her would be a little more difficult, since she was ambulatory, and if I had to guess, she would have disposed of her burner phone by now. Brian had drilled that into her.

However, she hadn’t learned to acquire new ones and give the number to us. But that would have to wait for the morning. I took the stairs two steps at a time, up to Brian’s floor. Thankfully, nothing was out of the ordinary.

I reached the door, and still a small part of me expected that something horrible had happened. I rung the door bell, and cursed myself for not calling ahead.

“Are you alone?” came Aisha’s voice through the door.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve brought lasagna for dinner, and scented candles for ambiance.”

I heard her manipulating the locks inside, and the door openend.

“You look… Dusty,” she said.

I nodded. “I’ve been digging through remains of what used to be our old hideout for almost four hours. How is Brian?”

“He woke up, and I made him some food. Rice and peas with a glass of milk.”

I set my bag down in the kitchen and helped myself to a glass of water. “Nobody unsavory came looking?”

Aisha shook her head.

“I’m going to take a shower, then crawl into bed with him,” I said. “Don’t stay up past… Two o’clock. I’ll expect you to be in your bedroom.”

She snorted. “What are you, my mom?”

“Do you want me to list the long-term effects of sleep deprivation?” I shot back. “Sleep is good for you.” I smirked. “And yeah, I’m your mom. I’m everybody’s mom. Did I ever tell you how I brought water bottles and power bars to the bank robbery?”

Aisha’s eyes widened, and she gave a chuckle. “No shit?”

“I take care of people, protect them. You’re Brian’s sister. That makes you family.”

“Bullshit,” Aisha said, still smiling. “How did a goody two-shoes like you ever become a villain?”

“By realising that the heroes were crooked,” I said. “Did you hear about the ward, Shadow Stalker?”


	77. 100

I recounted the story of Sophia Hess, aka. Shadow Stalker — school bullying, vigilante brutality, and so on. I kept it brief, and Aisha ate it up.

“I understand why they do it,” I finished. “They really need heroes. But at the same time, I don’t trust a system that lets a probationary felon roam free in a high school.”

We said our goodnights, and Aisha returned to the TV, while I headed for the shower. A quick rise got the cement dust out of my hair, and then I headed for Brian’s bedroom.

He lay there, sprawled in the sheets — a good sign. Not in so much pain it forced him to lie still.

In my underwear and karambit in hand, I slipped under the covers and cuddled up to him. With the greatest care I could manage, I put a small cut in his arm, and a maching one in my palm. Then I went to work at stitching him back together again, right where I had left off in the dead of night.

I stopped around two in the morning, and went to check on Aisha. She was lying on the sofa with a blanket over her. Quietly, I opened the door to her bedroom and made her bed, then carefully lifted her, and carried her into her bed. She stirred a little, and cooed her back to sleep.

I crawled back into bed with Brian, and this time, I let sleep take me.

* * *

Brian stirred and my conscious mind sprung awoke — I never slept heavily, and I had been sleeping with an arm draped over him. Sun was peeking through the slit between the curtains, and the clock on the bedside table read quarter past six.

He opened his eyes, and slight surprise spread across his sleepy face.

“’Morning,” he purred, and turned to face me.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“Well rested,” he said. “But I ache all over.”

I kissed him, and quietly wished I had time, he had the energy, and we had the privacy to do something more.

* * *

I left Brian and Aisha to sleep, and swung by Lisa’s place.

> 
>         coming by to check up on you.
>       

The busses were quite empty at seven in the morning on Sunday, and I enjoyed the privacy to investigate whether Night’s monstrous biology could be of any use to me. There were a lot of exotic organic polymers that I didn’t know the name of; but all of them seemed to be outside the ability of my current metabolism to sustain.

I didn’t want to start putting carbon fiber on my bones, without it growing naturally, in case I came under a power-nullifying effect with a broken bone. It would take time to create these new metabolic pathways and cell types. The sooner the better.

Having a dog’s anatomy available was also quite interesting — it was much more familiar, but in some ways, very different. In particular, the sensorium. Dogs had much better hearing — only partially due to the acoustics of their ear-shape — and much better olfaction — again only partially due to the aerodynamics of their nasal cavity.

The receptors themselves, I could capitalize on. Get the ability to track people by scent, and hear frequencies humans couldn’t. Those changes would take substantially less time to enact.

When I finally arrived, I found Lisa looking frazzled and jittery.

“Oh thank god you’re here,” she said.

“You don’t look so hot,” I remarked.

“Come in— you’ll see.”

She had dipped into a bottle of ibuprofene and consumed about six espressos’ woth of caffeine. There was a half-eaten pizza lying next to her work station. At some point she had rolled a whiteboard and a bulletin board out — where she had stored them in the tiny apartment, I had no idea.

The bulletin was a web of pictures and documents connected with tacks and colored string. The Whiteboard had several paragraphs worth of text — in Gregg shothand.

Lisa handed me a dossier. I opened it, and was greeted by a PRT personell file. Thomas Calvert. Senior Assistant Director in the Boston PRT. I turned the page: shareholder in Fortress Construction, lives in Bridgewater — and with his villain career here in Brocton Bay, he had some commuting to do.

“This is him?” I asked. I turned another page and found an untitled essay that began: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and pleased Coil was to travel both. —With apologies to Robert Frost.”

“I narrowed it down to a few dozen, then I did vocal analysis. I’m positive.” She looked at the page I was reading. “Yeah, I wrote that about an hour ago— sleep deprivation and power overuse made me think it was a good idea to flex my creative writing muscles. Sorry.”

I pulled her into a hug. “No, this is great work, Lisa. I thought this would end up taking days.”

“Yeah; not to be nagging, but do you think you could fix me up again? My head is splitting.”

My hand was already going into my pocket for the karambit.

* * *

Once Lisa was functioning again, I stuck around to brief her. There was no point in checking her work — not only was Lisa humble enough to double-check herself, but a lot of her utility came from the ability to not do work at all. Still, I tried to make sense of her web of connections, trying to divine the partterns of thought that had led her to Mr. Calvert, while I spoke.

“Brian is doing better,” I said. “I’m gonna go back to his place and make him breakfast, then I’ll look for Rachel and give her a healing session.”

Lisa lying on the sofa, eyes closed, enjoying being pain free. Physical exhaustion was setting in, and there was little I could do about that in one minute.

“I also went by the Loft. I thing I found all the hard drives and optical disks you had lying around.”

“Oh?” Lisa said.

“Just a precaution against PRT forensics poking around your files.” I glanced over at Lisa, and saw her open her eyes wide.

“Holy shit. Marry me, Taylor,” she said.

I giggled. “I’m spoken for, you’re asexual, and I’m very much not. It’d never work,” I said.

“I’m partial to an open marriage if you are,” Lisa retorted. “Seriously though, that was an awesome move. I had completely forgotten about something like that.”


	78. 101

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again after copious Hiatus. Also looking to pick up my Steven Universe fic.
> 
> It has been too long.

I left Lisa with a new assignment: compile evidence linking Calvert to Coil, strong enough to hold up in court. Of course I wasn’t gonna prosecute him, but it helped having some evidence against him. For blackmail.

I also left her with a polite and friendly request to get some damn sleep tonight — no more fix-ups from me. She and I both knew they weren’t a replacement for sleep, but we also agreed that spending a third of your time unconscious sucked.

The bus ride back was as uneventful as the one out. I spent it tending to my power and reading the dossier.

* * *

Brian opened the door for me — no password, no code. He had put on a T-shirt, but hadn’t gotten around to pants yet.

“I’ve been using your password scheme with your sister,” I said to him as he showed me in.

“Oh.”

I slapped his rear as I walked past him, and headed for the kitchen with the groceries I had picked up. “I’m making breakfast.”

* * *

Aisha could be coaxed out of bed with the promise of bacon, eggs and fresh coffee.

‘Bacon and eggs’ were perhaps a little misleading. The scrambled eggs was the gourmet variety with sour cream and chives, the bacon was lean apple wood smoked, and there was portobello mushrooms and tomatoes as a side. I’d brought freshly baked bread, too.

“Oh my god,” she said after the first bite. “This is the best breakfast I’ve ever had.”

Brian had given me a similar comment. Victor had been an expert cook, hence… You know.

“Bro,” she said. “You gotta marry Taylor. I can’t bear the thought of you breaking up and me never getting to eat this again.”

* * *

I kissed Brian goodbye, and went out to search for Rachel. Out on the outer docks where she had her kennel, and where she spent most of her free time. On the way there, I received a call from Lisa.

“I know what Dinah Alcott’s power is,” she said.

I didn’t reply; I just waited for her to elaborate.

“I managed to break into the internal systems of his main base, and extract some footage. His defenses kicked me out pretty quickly, but I managed to get shell and privilege escalation and download some files. Mostly administrative documents and logs, but also some security footage.

“Good chance Coil knows it was me, so I’ll have to go underground. I’ve covered my tracks and air-gapped my machines, currently burning to optical disks—”

“Lisa,” I said. “I’m familiar with your procedures.”

She would dismantle the hard drives and take a blowtorch to the platters, smash the computers with a sledge hammer, pack up, wipe the apartment down for prints, then leave in disguise of some kind.

“Dinah can estimate the likelihood of future events, but not a whole lot. Coil is giving her drugs to manage the headaches and truth serum to make sure she answers correctly.”

My mental trigger finger twitched. Outwards there was no reaction. “You can come live at my place for a few days,” I said. “Unless you have another safe-house Coil doesn’t know about?”

“Sure, but… What about your dad?”

“Can’t be helped. I’ll shoot off a convincing threat to Coil. Anything else?”

“Nope.”

“Good luck, then,” I said, and hung up.

I had a pretty convincing threat, all right. With my power, I could edit not only my own self, but any foreign body within me. As an experiment, earlier, I had picked up a flu virus, and fiddled with it’s DNA. Testing it out on some of my own cells prepared for the purpose, I found a nice little game of ‘engineer a horrible bioweapon disease.’

My current ‘high score’ was a hemorrhagic fever not unlike Ebola, only more virulent as I was pretty sure it made the lungs break down and the infected exhale the virus. It was a bit more friendly than Ebola, in that it had almost no incubation time. An outbreak could be easily quarantined.

I assembled a disposable smartphone, and shot off an e-mail to Coil.

> 
>         Subject: MAD
>     
>     If you send your mercenaries after us or our families, I'll make your main base
>     ground zero for a bioweapon attack. If the PRT hears of it, it happens anyway.
>     
>     I don't need to underline how much I am not fucking around.
>     
>     PB
>       

Then I shut the phone down and took out the SIM-card and battery.


	79. 110

Going by Rachel’s navigational skills, I made my way to her dog shelter. It was profoundly strange to find places based on other people’s familiarity. Whatever arcane part of my powers let me re-interpret information stored in the emergent neuron patters of other people, and turn it into my own much more optimized memory format, I didn’t know.

I picked up lunch at a small Greek place on the way. The smell was familiar to my snapshot of her.

That was a sentiment in the academic circles — no telepaths, because the computational requirements were too big. But I had seen the neuron impulses appear out of nowhere, in all the right places, all on their own. Whatever mechanism was behind powers, it knew the human brain as well as anyone.

I could rattle off the very same computational argument right back at these people: whatever powers came from, it was computationally proficient.

The makeshift shelter was a partially constructed house. My ability to reconstruct memories from my snapshots was… Lacking. There were sounds of dogs inside — barks, yips. The building project must have been abandoned at some point in the early zeros, judging from the rust on the small crane that stood by it.

I stopped in front of the door, and opened it almost like I owned the place. Almost the same way Rachel was want to do.

Inside was a space I wouldn’t deem fit to keep dogs in. Three walls had been erected, along with part of the first floor. The ground floor was partly cement, partly the gravel bed one put in before pouring cement. The missing wall opened the house into a small back yard, and the missing section of the first floor made most of it open air.

As soon as I was in, a tide of dogs came rushing at me. I stood my ground, as I was greeted by a variety of excited barks and growls.

“Hi,” I said to to Rachel.

She was standing with a black plastic sack and a shovel — no sling.

“What do you want?” she said.

There was a rhythm to interacting with Rachel. “I want you to put your sling back on,” I said. “You’ll fuck up your arm.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said.

That was either a lie, or she had taken painkillers. I knew the extent of her injuries better than she did, at this point. I strode through the gaggle of dogs at my feet holding the bag of Greek takeaway above snout-height. “Sit down, put on your sling, eat. I’ll work, then I’ll eat, then heal you.”

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Your job right now is to get better. If you over-work yourself, I can’t use you on the team. If that means I have to shovel dog shit for you, so be it.”

She handed me the shovel, and I gave her the food. “OK,” she said.

“And put on your sling again,” I added.

* * *

The dogs quickly got used to me — I was unobtrusive, non-threatening, and I smelled like Angelica.

Once the dung was removed, I grabbed a broom and started sweeping.

“You’re good with dogs,” Rachel said.

“I learned that from you.”

She furrowed her brow. “I didn’t teach you.”

“When I heal people, I can learn things from them,” I added. “It’s how I found this place, and the food.”

She nodded. “You healed Angelica?”

I nodded.

“Did you learn things from her?”

I nodded again. She continued to eat, and I finished sweeping. Fighting erupted between a black Labrador and a bigger dog of a breed I couldn’t place. The black Labrador was poorly socialized. Rachel knew how to tell, so I knew. “What’s his problem?” I said and gestured to the lab.

“His name is Sirius. He was bought as a pub for a twelve-year old, but he grew too big and unruly to keep in the house. They caged him outside, and his nails grew too long.”

“So he got an infection?” I asked.

She nodded. “Left him with the shelter rather than pay for a vet. He wasn’t trained or socialized, so they were going to put him down. I got him instead.”

I looked over the eleven canines. “Maybe I should take a look at your dogs, too.”

“Bullet,” she said, and pointed. A small Jack Russel. “She’s the smartest dog here, but she has a shoulder injury, so she can’t get the exercise she needs.”

“I’m gonna have to give them a small cut to use my power on them,” I said.

Rachel nodded. “Just hold them down while you do it. I’ll help you.”

* * *

By mid afternoon, I had cleared everyone of her dogs of disease and minor kinks. A couple of them yelped when I poked them in the neck with my karambit.

Bullet’s shoulder got on the right path to healing and being pain free, but it would take a few days. A lot of injuries stayed because of bad scarring. I dissolved the scar-tissue and converted what I could to stem cells.

Sirirus had heartworm. Rachel threw a fit when I told her, and ranted for a full minute. It was easy enough to liquefy the parasites and the harmful bacteria they contained. The trickiest part was making sure the concentrations of amino acids that resulted didn’t harm him. Child’s play.

The last thing I did was give Rachel half an hour of attention with my power.

“So, we’re just going to sit here for half an hour and do nothing?” she asked.

“I’m not going to be doing nothing,” I said. “You can take a nap — It’ll do you good.”

I took a seat against a wall, and Rachel sat down beside me. She held out her arm, and I rolled up her sleeve and made cut.

A few minutes later, she put her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes.


	80. 111

We were interrupted about twenty minutes later. A bottle broke against the outer wall — a hard impact, and a clattering of glass shards on the street outside.

With my power, I poked Rachel’s adrenal glands, broke down the sleep hormones in her brain, and gave her a mild shock. She’d already stirred from the sound, and my treatment got her awake and alert in seconds.

I jumped up and went for one of the boarded up windows, to peek outside. It was a group of people our age. Blonds, dye-blonds, and skinheads. The Empire affiliation was apparent at a glance.

“Empire goons,” I said.

“I’ll handle them,” Rachel said and whistled. Immediately, she was attended by Judas and Brutus.

She got up and reached out and brushed her hand over each of them in turn, and they started swelling. I picked up my bag, and pulled out my costume — same one I had used last night.

“I said, I’ll handle them!” she bit, hand on the door handle.

“Then go handle them!” I bit back.

* * *

“Your dogs are fucking noisy. It keeps me up at night, and it’s bad for business,” I heard the leader say.

“So?” Bitch responded. “Don’t do business. I don’t care.”

“We’re claiming this neighborhood. You should fuck off with your mutts.”

“I was here first,” she replied. “And Purity pretty much trashed our part of town, so I’m not going anywhere. Blame her.”

“It’ll be worst for you if you stay,” he said. “We’ll fuck you up. We’ll fuck your dogs up. Jeff, what was it you suggested? Razor blades in hot dogs?”

I half expected Rachel to give the attack order, but she was more level headed than she let on. “You’d be signing your own death warrant if you did,” she said. “You know what I can do.”

I chose that moment to step out. “If anyone is killing anyone here, It’ll be me busting a cap in your boss,” I said.

They startled a little at my appearance.

“Hey, Mike, we should book it,” one of the others said.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” I said. “I’m a Samaritan compared to her, if you hurt her dogs. I’ll only shoot you. Mess with Bitch, and you’ll be a chew toy to a giant monster.”

“I don’t need your help,” Bitch said.

The leader reached for his gun in his waistband. Before he could even grab the grip, I had my baton at his throat. My other hand took his pistol and I pointed it at the others. They put their hands up.

“Guns, knives, wallets, phones, watches, drugs,” I said. “On the ground.”

The leader tried to grab my baton. I pushed him in the throat with it, and he stumbled backwards.

“What part of ‘you’re getting mugged’ don’t you understand?” Bitch said.

“Aw fuck, man,” one of them said.

“Kaiser will hear about this,” another said.

I snickered. “Oh, I hope so; he might give me an excuse to kill him.”

* * *

Six wallets, two guns, five knives, seven cell-phones. No drugs, no watches.

“Now, before you think about taking revenge,” I said to them. “Remember that we now know where you live. If any of Bitch’s dogs come to harm, I’m blaming you. And when I blame people, they end up dead. So if you wanna stay alive, you’ll keep this to yourself.

“I don’t need another reason to take the Empire apart — you’re already out of three capes because of me.”

Bitch had been growing Brutus and Judas, and they were now a size larger than large St. Bernard’s, already starting to show bone spikes.

“Bitch,” I said. “Have Brutus and Judas chase these punks out of here.” Then to the Nazis: “Run!”

Bitch whistled an order: Brutus and Judas set into a trot, and the Empire thugs set into a run.

“I could have handled them,” she protested.

* * *

There wasn’t a lot of money — only about fifty dollars total. The phones would serve as more burners, and the knives… I threw away all the ones with swastikas, and kept the rest. Never had I heard of having too few knives. The guns were both cheap and mis-maintained.

“We need to find a better place to keep your dogs,” I said.

“Fuck no,” Rachel said. “They don’t scare me.”

“I can think of six ways they might kill your dogs while you’re not here,” I said. “And I’ll find them and put them in wheelchairs, but that’s not going to get you your dogs back.”

Rachel didn’t say anything.

“Do you have a place to stay?”

“Here.”

I rubbed my temples. “OK, stick around, then. I’ll come by later with a sleeping bag and some more food for you. Keep Brutus and Judas big like this— can you do that?”

“Yeah.”

I took off my utility belt and handed it to her. “Keep the guns too. Shoot first, ask questions later. Use the phone.”


	81. 1000

I shot off a text to Alec as I left Rachel’s shelter.

> 
>         need to talk to you. still at safe house?
>       

It was a few minutes before I got a reply.

> 
>         I'll wait around for you.
>       

* * *

I found Alec sitting in a lawn chair within sight of the boat. On a lawn chair, enjoying the sun.

“You don’t look like you have a care in the world,” I said.

He shrugged. “I don’t see the use in worrying. You’re on it, aren’t you? Fighting the Empire, figuring out what to do about the boss. I trust you.”

That was oddly high praise. “Where’s your hobo house keeper?”

“Around.”

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“Lumps and bruises. Nothing serious,” he said.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said and took out my karambit. “Arm, please.”

He held it out for me, and I let my power delve into him for the first time. He was in worse shape than he let on — old scars in his peripheral nervous system, lots of bruises. I purged his system of pathogens and started destroying the clotted blood in his bruises, and reducing the swelling.

The nerve damage was strange. “What have you done to the nerves in your arms?”

Alec looked at me quizzically, while I began creating stem-cells to compensate for the damage, and remove the scarring. If I were to hazard a guess, it looked like someone had done to his nerves, what I did to my muscles; only he didn’t have the regeneration ability to make up for it.

“That… Tingles. What are you doing?”

“Removing scar tissue,” I said. “Can you think of any reason why your nerves look like someone stonewashed them?”

Alec furrowed his brow. “I get this… Feedback, when I use my power— especially when I overuse it.”

I nodded. Lisa got headaches, Alec got… Peripheral neuropathy. I went over his brain to make sure nothing similar had happened there and found another strange thing. His motor-cortex was showing activity, as if he was doing physical labor; despite being seated. This activity was mirrored in his corona pollentia, somehow.

I filed that away in the back of my mind, and looked for other anomalies. True to form, Alec’s emotional responses were… Off. His neurotransmitter balances were lopsided. Taken together it could be evidence of drug abuse. Ecstasy — that is, MDMA — was supposed to be able to permanently alter your emotional responses.

I went over several hypotheses while I patched him up.

“Are you done soon?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’d like to know what secrets you’re keeping from me,” I said. “But it’s OK if you don’t want to share.”

Alec snickered and looked away. “Why?”

“I’m your team leader, and we’re about to go toe-to-toe with a powerful enemy. I need to know, so we don’t run into unforeseen problems. Your secret is safe with me.”

Alec looked back at me with eyes half-lidded. “You’re funny Taylor— always so dramatic. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’ Do you read a lot?”

I glared at him. “Don’t make me go bother Lisa about this, Alec. She’s overworked as is. How about a quiod pro quo?”

Alec raised an eyebrow. “What do you have what I want?”

“A secret about my power,” I said.

He pondered this for a while. “OK.” I expected him to begin talking, but he didn’t.

“So…. What?”

He held up a finger, and after a brief moment, he pointed.

I looked, and saw a man in a dirty jacket, with a bushy beard and wearing a cap. His trousers were worn and stained, his shoes had seen better days. And he was walking towards us with his eyes were closed.

“This is my power,” the man said, and took of his hat, bowing deeply. “With a bit of prep time, I enthrall. The whole causing jitters and stumbles is a parlor trick— the five minute act.”

Regent was a Master. From the way the homeless man moved, it seemed like a very intricate level of control.

“How many? And how long to establish control? Range?” I asked.

This time, Alec spoke. The homeless man turned around and put his hands over his ears. “More than four makes me… Uncoordinated. It takes about one to three hours the first time, but after that it’s easy as pie. About eight hundred meters.”

That put him at a solid Master get-the-hell-out-of-dodge. I nodded. “Cool. I can see why you’d like to lie low.”

Alec smiled.

“Whenever I heal people, I learn everything about them,” I said. “Memories, skills, personality, emotions, blueprints for the entire body, and everything in the brain.”

There was an imperceptible flash of surprise across his face. “Shit,” he said and looked at his arm, where I pressed my finger.

“Your secrets are quite safe with me,” I said and smiled. “And from now on, you ask my permission before taking more thralls.”


	82. 1001

Alec explained to me that the homeless guy was an agent of his father’s, sent to bring him back to Quebec.

Because, of course, I was teaming with one of Heartbreaker’s children. Going over his attachments from my snapshot, I got a strong sense of enmity against his father. I suppose I couldn’t blame him — Hearbreaker was one of the worst supervillains going by sheer creep factor.

“I have a proposition,” I said.

Alec cocked his head to one side expectantly.

“After we get Coil and things stabilize, you and I take a field trip to Quebec? Just me, you, an automatic rifle or two,” I said with a gleam in my eye. At this point I might as well admit it: I had a penchant for taking out supervillains.

Alec grinned. “You know, that actually might not be a bad idea, Taylor.”

* * *

Once I was assured that Alec would do fine — not want for lodging or protection — I made my way north, to the Market. One of these days I would have to get myself a Vespa or something; public commute in the Bay was… Less than impressive.

The Market was as bustling as ever, seemingly oblivious of all the horror that had befallen the Docks. It was fairly natural — there wasn’t really any market for the usual gang money-makers here. It was a barter-and-fun-times part of town, not a hookers-and-drug-dens part of town.

And… Perhaps, there was a second part to it. Because I knew for a fact that the Market drew tourists. And whatever drew tourists, put money in the city’s coffers. And if villains got stupid enough to cost the town real revenue? The heroes would crack down hard.

And unwritten rule to leave the Boardwalk and the Market alone. A disgustingly politically small minded Schelling point.

I found a booth with outlet gear and brought what Rachel needed: sleeping bag, sleeping mat, portable stove, tea kettle — she didn’t like coffee, pot, cutlery, two buckets, and a night light.

My next stop was a supermarket, quite a lot closer to Rachel’s hideout, where I brought groceries and hygiene products. She’d have to leave to get dinner, but for now she would have enough for the night and the morning.

“I can take care of myself,” was the first thing Rachel said to me when she saw.

“Yeah, but it’d mean leaving your dogs,” I said. “Give me a call if you need something troublesome.”

She gave me a curt nod. “Thanks.”

* * *

It was all well and good to make plans with Alec like that: there were a lot of villains the world wouldn’t miss if I put a high-caliber bullet through them. Most of the Slaughterhouse Nine were on that list. Nilbog, too.

But the matter at hand was getting Coil. Essentially he had a huge informational advantage: one bit. One bit was the difference between fifty-fifty odds, and two-to-one. If what Lisa had gotten to was true, I needed to deny him that advantage.

And not only that, but he had Dinah as well, whom he could milk for an unknown amount of intel.

So the question was how to put him in a position where he would have to try two different things. The obvious idea was to ask him to call a coin-flip, and punish him for getting it wrong.

I already had the ability to manufacture the stuff of a pathologist’s worst nightmare; and I had even already threatened Coil with it. The leap was not so great to the idea that I didn’t need bombs — although I could whip one up with store-brought chemicals. The question remained of how much of our budget I’d be willing to blow on it, and how much fertilizer would be enough to raise eye-brows.

Then there was the prospect of doxxing Coil same as he did to the Empire, or just picking up a rifle and going on a shooting spree on his crew. I certainly had the marksmanship and infiltration skills to take on a significant force of ordinary soldiers.

The principal obstacle was making the ransom scheme itself. Coil would no doubt have numerous ways of circumventing me; lots of people, resources, the ability to lean on the PRT. I’d need to take myself out of the equation.

* * *

“Where have you been?” Dad asked me when I came home some time after six.

“Looking after my newly homeless friends, and trying to figure out hot to kill a guy who has two shots at everything and a prophet for a sidekick.”

Dad furrowed his brow, but didn’t say anything. I went to my room.

It had been a while since I had the chance to sit down in my room. My notes were more or less outdated, but it was still a familiar and easy catalyst for thought.

I’d need a mechanism, and Victor had in his heyday mastered explosives ordnance disposal and electronic engineering. My knowledge of the area was relatively lacking, seeing has I had yet to perfect the ability to pull on the memories in my snapshots.

Opening my computer, I navigated to an electronics forum and started reading basic tutorials. It wasn’t very long before I was jotting down shopping lists of base components. Once I had a good picture of what I needed, I started looking into modifying cellphones for a trigger.

Essentially, all the components of a bomb, without the bomb-part. The last thing I needed was a small, slow explosive charge of some kind to disperse the payload — inside an abscess in my hip, I was building up a virulent mucus of that hemorrhagic fever I had developed earlier.

I added ‘syringes’ to the shopping list.

This was going to be an interesting week. Hopefully, next weekend would be less intense. Dad called me down for dinner: chicken with rice and peas.

“I have to run another errand,” I told him. “Gosh, I feel like I’m a mom tending to a flock of unruly kids.”

Dad cocked his head to one side. “What’s the matter?”

“My sidekick super genius won’t keep her bed time— that’s the errand. I had to go check up on the dog lover earlier to make sure she wasn’t gonna sleep on the floor of a makeshift dog kennel — which she was going to, by the way.”

Dad snickered.

“And that’s not all,” I continued. “I also have an unruly sociopathic teenage boy to keep tabs on, so he doesn’t go do something that’s incredibly bad for PR. At least my boyfriend can take care of himself and his little sister — except I did have to tuck her into bed last night. She’s my age, too! I’m tucking fifteen-year-olds into bed!”

That got me a laugh.


	83. 1010

I swung by our territory in costume and fetched the bag of our belongings I had left in the basement. If I was to guess, nobody had even been down here.

With the rubble sack slung over one shoulder, I went back to an anonymous rooftop where I had left my civilian clothes, several bags, and a big backpack. There, I repackaged all of the data evidence, and all of the personal belongings.

With that in tow, I made my way to Lisa’s third safe house — it was her second-to-last one, and Coil knew about the last one, so no risky moves from here on out.

It was an even smaller, even cheaper place than the others. A single room, no separate kitchen.

“Hi,” she said. The pain was visible on her face.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” I said and grinned.

She genned me inside, and began talking: “I’ve been making more headway today than I ever have, working on anything; if it wasn’t for the pain and budget constrains, I’d be dancing and drinking champagne right now.”

“So you can link Coil and Thomas Calvert?” I asked.

“It won’t hold up in court at this point, but it’s enough for probable cause to go over his every move and property with a fine tooth comb.”

I frowned. “You did good work, but it’s not enough,” I said. “Don’t trust the PRT to investigate one of their own.”

She nodded, and took at seat at her desk. I sat down on her bed.

“We need a new base of operations,” I said. “Rachel is getting harassed by the Empire, and Alec is… I don’t even know. Scamming his way through life? Seducing the teenage daughters of rich business magnates?”

Lisa snorted. “Something like that, yes.”

“But we are almost in shape to work again,” I continued.

“All thanks to you,” Lisa said. “Our own budget Panacea.”

Lisa leaned back in her chair and began massaging her eyes, trying to rid herself of the pain.

“I think I found Coil’s weakness,” I said.

She perked up.

“Feedback time. If the delay between decision and outcome is too great, his power is lessened. I was thinking of forcing him to answer yes/no questions, and depending on his answer, setting events in motion to make something horrible happen hours later.”

“So he has to keep both timelines in the air at once, for fear he would collapse the wrong one,” she completed. “Nice. That genius intellect of yours is paying dividends.”

Her face contorted a little in pain.

“Yeah, about that migraine heal, or what?” I said.

“Please,” she whined.

“Promise me you go to sleep, though. I’m not a replacement for REM sleep.”

She joined me on the bed and held out her arm. I scratched her with my knife, and made contact. It was strange that her power was so limited — and that it didn’t complain when I made the migraine go away.

The migraines seemed to arise through the neurological channels our of her corona pollentia; it was clearly caused directly. But not in a persistent manner. More like a gradual worsening of symptoms — stopping the migraine didn’t prompt her power to start building up one anew.

I finished up quickly.

“You’re faster?” Lisa said.

I shrugged. “Maybe?”

“No, you are. Wait— you went to see Alec, right?”

I nodded.

“Did you heal him?”

I nodded again.

She ruminated on this for a second.

“Don’t strain yourself,” I said.

“Has your power changed any?” Lisa asked.

I furrowed my brows. “What do you mean? I found out I could work with other people— but I’m pretty sure I’ve always been able to do that…” I looked down in thought. Had there been any changes? “Maybe? It’s a little like my power has gotten… ‘Crisper’ in the last two days.”

“It escalates,” Lisa said. “Every time you heal a cape, and— Not very much, unfortunately.”


	84. 1011

My eyes widened. It rang true— Night had given me my snapshots; it wasn’t that I hadn’t noticed before, it was that it hadn’t existed before. Victor had given me the ability to steal skills — a hideously complicated neurological process.

The others — I wasn’t so sure what I had gotten out of it, but it seemed like I was a few percent faster now.

“Awesome,” I said, and rubbed my forehead. “I’m a Trump-one.” On one hand, I didn’t need complications to my powers like this — the speed boost was a boon, sure, but the rest? “So, any idea what I got from —” I demonstratively counted on my fingers “— Othala, Brian, Rachel, You, and Alec?”

“You already know what you got from Night and Victor?”

“I have non-neurological memory of the bodies of people I’ve been in contact with, and I can relatively easily learn what they had learned when I made contact. Motor skills and learned reflexes are easiest.”

Lisa nodded thoughtfully. “Well, Othala’s power had something to do with powers, so there’s likely a Trump-like benefit there; Alec’s power is to do with nervous systems, Bitch’s power is biological manipulation, both might just have added more power. As for my own— I’m drawing a blank.”

I thought on that a little myself. “I need more data.”

Lisa grinned. “More ‘data’ means more skills, more power —”

“— just what we need to defeat Coil.” I finished. I hadn’t gotten around to asking Lisa about powers putting neuron impulses into your head, and made to find the pages in my notebook, but Lisa stopped me.

She took my hand, and I turned to see her leaning in — my social algorithms picking up on her intentions a quarter second too late.

Her lips met mine. They were soft and smooth — she was wearing a drop of eau de colonge on her cheek.

A number of thoughts went through my head. She was kissing me because she liked me — that much was obvious. I should have seen the pupil dilation earlier and made the connection.

She liked me because I took away her pain, I matched her wits, I was charming, I presumably fell outside her criteria of power-induced ‘ickyness’ as the first person she had met in years.

Part of my mind objected with the cached response that I wasn’t a lesbian. Really, even that assessment was inaccurate — I had never experienced sapphic desires, but those were not exclusive to lesbianism.

And why not? A quirk of neurology. A neurology I had long since revamped and changed — at one point I might have been repulsed by the idea of kissing a woman, but now I felt only surprise.

She broke the kiss, pulling back and I saw her resolve falter. “Sorry, I—” she began.

“No.” I said, and put a finger on her lips. “I refuse to accept your apology.”

Her eyes widened in surprise.

“You an I both know what a can of worms it is to start this kind of drama in the team right now. We need cohesion, we need focus. I need Brian not to second-guess me, I need you not to second-guess yourself.

“If we get out of this alive, and if Brian is OK with it, we’ll go on a date. But you don’t get to do a spur-of-the-moment thing with me in a safe-house apartment while riding the high of migraine-relief, with me just having realized I have accidentally turned myself bisexual.”

I removed my finger from her lips.

“Uh,” she said. “That was very…”

“Unromantic?” I suggested.

“Deliberate. I like it.”

* * *

I wandered home, clearing my head with the night air. Or rather, I paged though my notebook of to-do’s.

Sussing out the nature of powers, dismantling the Empire… I added ‘take over the world’ for good measure.

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

I looked up from my notebook — I hadn’t caught the man in my peripheral vision, owing to the fact that he had just stepped out of an alley. Another guy stepped out next to him. They smelled of alcohol. Both white, likely Empire affiliations if the tattoo’s on one of them were any indication.

“So, do you and your buddy make a habit of getting drunk and picking up fifteen year-old lesbians in strange neighborhoods?” I asked him. Better to instantly disarm and dismantle the situation, rather than letting it escalate to broken bones.

“No, you’re not fifteen,” they other guy said.

“Yeah, and you’re too pretty to be a lesbian.”

I reached into my pocket for my pen pepper-spray. “Go find a seedy bar and have another drink instead of bothering me,” I said. “There’s women there who are of majority, and out to meet creeps like you there.”

“She’s got a mouth on her,” one of them said. “What do you say we teach her a lesson?”

Rapists, rare as they were. Most sexual assault was committed by relatives, at parties or by close friends. Oh well, I’d tried.

My hand flew out of my pocket and painted a brown streak of searing pain across the first guy’s eyes. He yelped, even as I spun into a leg sweep. He hit the ground a bit too hard.

The other guy registered what was happening and went to grab me. I met his privates with my shin hard enough to incapacitate him instantly.

Hopefully it had been dark enough, and them drunk enough, for a positive ID to be unlikely. And in any case, admitting that a fifteen year-old girl had taken you out was humiliating to idiots like this.


	85. 1100

I came home past midnight to find Dad asleep, and spent the rest of the night drawing up a plan.

First were potential targets for my next ‘upgrade.’ It had to be ‘acceptable targets’ which narrowed it down to Empire, Merchants, and Über and Leet. The latter would even be justified — they had attacked us once before, and I was in shape to take them on myself.

Second were avenues of conditionally fucking over Coil. With Lisa’s information payload soon ready to go, that would be another weapon in my arsenal. Diseases, doxxing, bombs. It was beginning to look like ‘enough,’ but I wanted one more avenue of attack before proceeding.

Two things came to mind: electronic warfare, and while I had initially planned plain public-terror attacks, perhaps targeting could be more subtle. Blowing up whatever transformer station supplied Coil’s main base would get him suitably on edge.

Third… I needed to do some PR work. And that itself could also be an avenue of attack against Coil. Outing him as the perpetrator of the Empire doxxing would not net him any favors.

* * *

I cooked breakfast for Dad and myself, putting myself through a wakeup routine. On top of the night’s deep thinking, a bit of recovery was lovely. I took the time to download more skills and edit my brain. Opening up avenues of sapphic romance, and doing the groundwork on chasing down my suicidal tendencies.

“You seem like you’re in a good mood,” Dad pointed out to me.

It was strange, even now, to think that I could have been in the foulest mood possible, and outwards have a spring in my step and a song on my lips. And even stranger that the foulest mood could give way to anything else if I willed it.

“I am,” I said. “I’ve got a series of insidious and horrific blackmail schemes to leverage against a known supervillain.”

Dad nodded, uncomprehendingly, as usual when I was being cryptic. “Sounds like dark-side hero work.”

“It’s a personal grudge,” I clarified.

“Ah. Does he deserve it?”

“He kidnaps little girls and leveraged friends of mine with death threats.”

Dad pursed his lips. “I’m not even gonna ask what you’re planning to blackmail him with.”

“And I’m not gonna tell.”

* * *

My call was picked up. “Numberman speaking,” a baritone spoke in my ear.

“Hi, I’m Para Bellum. I’m with the Undersiders,” I said.

“I know.”

That was a scary thing to say — easily a facetious comment, but I had a feeling this guy meant it. “Glad I don’t have to authenticate myself, then. I need an untraceable debit card tied to our expenses account, to be destroyed soon after use.”

Truthfully, I could have used one of Lisa’s, but I didn’t want to risk her power telling her what I had brought.

“Certainly; we’ll be in touch,” he said, and hung up.

A minute later, a text gave me a drop-off point.

* * *

The drop point was a back alley. I received a text, and found the card under a trash container, exactly where it should be. Efficient courier service, these people employed.

* * *

For my first purchase, I brought month-long subscriptions to screens on several cloud server solutions for peanuts. Just sandboxed command lines on the open Internet, but more than enough for me.

I also created anonymous e-mail accounts on various servers. Those would be the channels through which Coil could avoid being outed. They would also serve as distribution points for fake videos of him taking credit for terror attacks.

I just needed to sew a costume. Lisa could help me make sure it was an impeccable reproduction. If Coil could photoshop us, I could pretend to be him on camera.

My second purchase was cash. It quickly came to use in purchasing electronics, electronic components, plumbing, and household chemicals. I needed pagers and pre-paid cells to act as detonation mechanisms, I needed the ingredients, I needed fertilizer, I needed a lot of things to build bombs, and — I suppose an accurate term would be ‘sprayers.’

My third purchase was a moderate amount of cryptocurrency — for purchasing illegal contraband in an untraceable manner.

* * *

We had a work bench in the basement.

Armed with a cheap soldering iron, pre-printed circuit boards, and a multimeter, I began dismantling the cell-phones. The crux of turning one into a detonator, was to use the vibrator. A small DC electric motor, getting enough juice to power something interesting.

Another device I spent some time building was a circuit that generate a random stream of bits. Upon completion — a rather intricate thing, I’d pulled from a web page — I found that I had no use of it. So that was an hour’s work wasted. If I needed random data, it was much easier to query either my web-servers’ built-in entropy sources, or those web-pages that provided true random numbers.

And I didn’t need a complex system to wire up the phones either.

My initial idea was to have two phones per bomb, where texting one stopped the countdown, texting the other did nothing, and texting both restarted the countdown. This was entirely unnecessary; I could do it over e-mail, programmatically.

All I needed was to make a tampering-fail-deadly system for the phone detonators. It wasn’t a total loss to have purchased all the electronic components.

With that initial hurdle out of the way — I chastised myself for not thinking this far — I began designing the sprayers. This was, of course, mostly a mental activity, so I used my hands for something worthwhile: sewing a black bodysuit with an intricate white snake motif.


	86. 1101

Lisa handed me the dossier — proof that Coil was Thomas Calvert.

“What’s next?” she said.

“Coil must have other parahumans in his employ— I need a good picture of all the assets he has avail—” I began.

Lisa just turned around and fetched another folder.

“Principal threat: he might hire Faultline’s crew, and he has the Travelers in his pocket already. Mercenaries, I’m sure you can help us deal with,” she said.

I opened the folder and read. Faultline’s crew were mercenaries with cut-rate powers, save for their pyrokinetic Spitfire, whom the Undersiders had once tried recruiting, and a rarely seen Shaker 12.

I did a double take on that file. Labyrinth, Elle Winther, suffered from either severe attention deficit or autism. Capable of altering entire sections landscape and architecture in dozens of seconds. Everything 9 and above meant ‘surrender and beg for mercy’ to anybody but the top tier Protectorate and Guild.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Yeah, fortunately Faultline’s running a strict no-kill policy,” Lisa said. “There’s more.”

I paged, and found the Travelers. Nomads of unknown origin, four principal members. A guy that could turn cars into bullets, a seemingly limitless shapeshifter, a girl who could summon miniature suns, and a teleporter specializing in annoyance. They were not averse to killing.

“Oh god, that’s even worse,” I said. “What do you have on his electronic defenses? I’m thinking of writing him a worm.”

“I already have a trojan in his system, but using it is risky — his firewall is going to flag it pretty much instantly, and his sysadmin is competent and well-paid. I’ll send you the code.”

* * *

Brian opened the door for me. “Taylor?”

I stepped inside, and put down my bag. “I want you to make sure Alec and Rachel are safe. Shit is about to go down,” I said.

“When?”

“In the next few days. Coil has the ability to learn our innermost secrets without anyone noticing — anything that could in theory be tortured out of us — so I can’t tell you.”

“OK,” he said, closing the door behind me. “That’s a nasty power. Information hygiene is a priority; got it. Coffee?”

“Yes please,” I said, and followed him into the kitchen. “And, here’s a weird thing I found out: Lisa has a crush on me.”

He snorted. “What?”

“I might accidentally have promised to take her on a date at some point, I hope you don’t mind,” I said.

He hesitated. “Well…”

“She’s not going to come between the two of us,” I said. “Look, we’ll talk it over, I just wanted to let you know.”

“Thanks,” he said, starting the espresso brewer. I took a seat on a bar stool.

“How’s Aisha?” I asked.

Brian shrugged. “Out of harms way,” he said with a smile.

I nodded. “How are you feeling?”

“Good,” he smiled more. “Surprisingly good considering all the bones I’ve broken.”

“Good enough for sex?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Why; aren’t you forward? Is that what I am to you — big, strong, and sexually available?”

“Do you mind?” I shot back with a grin. “Should I take your sister up on her suggestion and put a ring on you? You know the death statistics for parahumans — might be our only chance.”

Brian snorted, and came around the bar to me. He wrapped his arms around my waist. “I think sex will do just fine.”

I kissed him, and the coffee machine beeped.

* * *

The most amazing thing occurred to me in the throes of post-coital bliss.

I had read the Anarchist’s Cookbook — every respectable prospective bomb-maker had.

What I hadn’t considered, was my power’s propensity for chemical synthesis. I could staple phosphate ions onto adenosine, cleave individual amino acids off proteins, and break lactic acid apart into glucose.

With a thought, I gathered a few glucose molecules and assembled them into cellulose — an easy task. Now came the harder part — it felt as if picking up single sand grains with your nails — of attaching nitrate groups to it. After seven tries, I gave up and reached for amino acids to create myself an enzyme that could do it for me.

“What are you thinking about?” Brian asked me.

“Trinitrocellulose,” I said. “Gun cotton. An explosive.”

“Hm. What of it?”

“I can make it,” I said.


	87. 1110

Finding Faultline’s number wasn’t exactly difficult.

Sitting in my basement-workshop with a bottle of ammonia and a packet of cotton swabs, sipping one, eating the other, and extracting the finished product through a syringe in my elbow; I had a lot of time to think — or in this case, chat.

“Faultline speaking.”

Cordial, stern-sounding. Faultline was a top-of-the-line mercenary. Just like the Undersiders, they had built their rep on not fucking up.

“Hi, Faultline, this is Para Bellum, I was hoping we could have a chat.”

“What about?”

“A contract,” I said. “I’m looking to hire you for a job.”

“What job?”

“You guys take a vacation for the next ten days. Unfortunately we can’t pay you in money.”

“That might be a problem,” she said, with a snort.

“I can, however, avail you of, say… Homemade electronic devices, medical expertise, espionage services, information gathering…”

She laughed. “I’m sorry, Para Bellum; we have a pre-existing engagement.”

With another phone, I texted Lisa.

> 
>         faultline already hired.
>       

“I see…” I said. “Could you hang on for just a moment?”

“Sure,” she said.

The reply came.

> 
>         Coil.
>       

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing. What’s Coil paying you— a million dollars? Two?”

“Coil? That mercenary hustler? He isn’t our—” she began.

“Faultline, you, me, and Tattletale all know you’re lying.”

She hung up.

I bent the medical tube attached to the syringe in my arm, and began filling the sixteenth petri dish. I lidded the fifteenth dish, with its perforated, cloth-covered lid, and put it the metal through with the others, before covering it in salt.

I had been at this for one hour, and I had enough explosive to blow up a small house.

* * *

The actual sprayer design was a gas cartridge, a capsule of virus, a nozzle, and two valves — one to arm it, and one electronic. Much the same as one of my gun-cotton bombs, it would be triggered by a cellphone.

The gun-cotton which I could produce at approximately six ounces per hour, would serve to be both pipe bombs and thermobaric devices.

It was a crazy venture, and it hinged on getting Coil to work with me. Blackmail him into using his power — or Dinah’s, whatever it was — lest civilians suffer casualties.

Coil, as far as Lisa could tell me, was a cruel man, bordering on the psychopathic. He would unflinchingly let me blow things up without a care in the world, so it was all about making sure he would be a target himself.

Also, it stood to reason that I needed an ‘in.’ Pressuring Coil wasn’t a way to defeat him — I would need to take out his power, then go in for the kill. To that end, I had several ideas and almost all of them involved either bullets or breaking the unwritten rules, or both.

The unwritten rules were actually the subject of one of my vlogs. ‘The Uneasy Balance,’ I had called it.

And as a further complication, I was quite certain Coil had a good idea of when I was going to attack him…

It was quite an amazing array of things I had created in the last couple of days, working on a budget of nothing special, and with tools I’d purchased in the hardware store. Did that mean I ought to add a Tinker rating? Arguably creating metabolic chemical synthesis pathways with my power would warrant that already.

* * *

On Wednesday evening, Lisa gave me a heads-up: an opportunity neatly presented itself.

We had spent some time figuring out an ‘acceptable target’ for exercising my Trump power, and had narrowed it down to the Archer’s Bridge Merchants, and Über and Leet. The Merchants, were fairly nebulous, and also numerous: Skidmark, Mush, Squealer, and Trainwreck, and a host of transients and low-lives. I didn’t feel like taking on ordinary humans like that — undoubtedly I could, but I didn’t want to put anyone in the hospital.

Über and Leet had also painted a target on themselves for two reasons: first, they had attacked us, and therefore made acceptable targets of themselves, and second, it seemed like they were for hire. I couldn’t allow another group to aid Coil.

They had attacked a small bank and made off with the ATM — potentially up to a dozen thousand dollars or so, in cash.

It would be a kind of poetic justice.


	88. 1111

Über and Leet had done much the same as we did. Making off with the contraband, and stowing it in an old storage unit. That it hadn’t worked out so well for us, wasn’t evidence that it was a bad idea.

Unfortunately for the two of them, Tattletale had been following their heist feed, and deduced where they had put it. There wasn’t much you could do when your enemy had a powerful Thinker. Much less when there were two.

Finding the shed they had put it in proved to be a little more work — a combination of good old gumshoe-style trying to track something heavy being moved, and a video-call with Tattletale eventually led me to the shed in question.

The door was locked with a big padlock — a hard-to-pick, expensive one with a loop of hardened steel. Little did they realize that the eyes it was a weak point. I made fairly short work of them with a hacksaw, and discarded the defeated lock.

Once inside, I identified the power supply for the ATM, and spooled out a roll of extensor chord — there was an outlet down aisle. A nickel for thirty minutes of power. Fortunately, Leet hadn’t employed some sort of EMP device that would damage the electronics. Unfortunately, they had cut the wire, so I had to mend it.

It turned on, and I punched in the factory default administrator password. It worked. Then I set all the internal trays to one-dollar bills. Much easier to just circumvent the software than the hardware in this case — I had brought some explosive charges and two sandbags for tamping, but I doubted I could get in without triggering a marking grenade of some sort.

Now came the tricky part. I located the networking cable — cut, much the same as the power cable, necessitating mending it too — and connected it to an adapter, which I plugged into a laptop. With fingers crossed, I watched the diagnostics printout as my homemade spoofing program began doing it’s job.

I had spent all night on it. That, and making more gun cotton.

It worked, and I gave a small squeal of delight as I took out my credit card and ordered five hundred dollars. It hummed, and began spitting out twenty-dollar bills.

* * *

I watched with a hand mirror as the two cut-rate villain video-game cosplayers approached the locker. They soon noticed that it had been broken open, and rushed to check up on it. Über tore the door open, and they both stopped — bewildered at the ATM still being there. I heard indistinct, but agitated chatter between then, and they went in to inspect it.

I had emptied it of about three fourths of the cash inside, and the only evidence I’d left behind was the stripped wire stumps on the back, and the broken padlock eyes.

The money and my gear was in a duffel bag in a storage unit in the other end of the complex.

I took a running start, and ran two steps up the gable of the aisle, before proceeding across the roof, with utmost stealth.

* * *

“No, they definitely did take something — look at the wires here. Someone stripped them,” Über said.

No doubt he was channeling some Sherlock Holmes skill. Lisa had gotten me a dossier on the two the previous evening — just the basics. Powers, skills, MO’s. Leet could build anything once, Über could master any one fairly narrow skill he wanted at any time, one at a time.

I started clapping, slowly. “Well, well, well, how the tables have turned…” I said.

Über immediately came darting out of the shed, closely followed by Leet.

“You!” he said, with an impressive amount of venom in his voice.

“Me?” I asked, with mock surprise, and looked behind me.

They were wearing some sort of clown-masks and suits. The videogame reference was lost on me. What wasn’t lost on me was the fact that they were both armed with what appeared to be very real guns. This didn’t match with their MO, but still put me on edge.

“What did you do with our money?” Leet hissed.

I started laughing. “Oh man, be happy I didn’t kidnap one of you and tie you to a chair. Look—” Instead of actually saying anything, I exploded into a burst of motion, towards the edge of the roof. One hand guided me into a roll-somersault hybrid to the ground, while I drew my taser with the other.

Sticking the landing, I shot Leet and he collapsed, convulsing. Über was upon me with a well-directed kick to my head, but I bocked it with my free hand, letting his steel-toed shoe impact my arm protector harmlessly. I retaliated with a leg sweep, which Über jumped over, and spun into a high kick, making full use of my superhuman agility and strength. He only barely managed to dodge, and retreated.

I threw the taser aside, having electrocuted Leet thoroughly already, and we took up stances.

He opened with a quick jab, which I ducked under, before grabbing onto his arm, squeezing and twisting, pulling every ounce of performance out of my fresh muscles. He yelped and managed a backwards somersault to avoid dislocating his shoulder.

Little did it help, as my next move was a kick directly at said joint. With a popping sound and a yell of pain, Über stumbled back, and I made a closing move, evaded his one armed defense, and hit him in the stomach with a haymaker. He collapsed.

* * *

While I had them down and out, I got to work; first cuffing then, then measuring out a low dose of a general anesthetic I had synthesized and extracted from myself, and injecting it into Über.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Just a sedative.”

“What the fuck do you want,” Leet spat.

“I want you to reconsider your career path,” I said.

I dragged them into the shed, and turned on a floodlight, before closing the door.

“Über, how do you feel?” I asked.

“Drowsy,” he said, speech slurred a little.

“It’s OK if you want to take a nap, yeah? I promise I won’t hurt you.”

Leet snorted. “Oh yeah? How do I know we can trust you?”

“You have my word,” I said. “And I never break it when given.”

“I swear, if you do anything to him—” Leet began.

I crouched down in front of him. “Finish that sentence and I just might. I understand he is your friend, but sentimentality bores me.”

Then I took off my helmet, and my Balaclava. “I’m Jessica,” I lied.


	89. 10000

“What the fuck?” Leet eventually said.

I reached out and took a hold of the clown mask.

“Hey—” he protested.

“I have a Thinker on my team who could uncover your secret identity in a day. If I wanted to know what you look like under the mask, I’d ask her to find your social media profiles,” I said, and removed it.

He was gaunt, white, and stubbled. Deep set eyes, and red haired. Not handsome, but not unattractive either. “I just want to talk to the person you are when you’re not pretending.”

I sat down opposite of him.

“So…” he said.

“There’s a guy in town I want dead,” I opened. “And he has a penchant for hiring people who are for hire. I want to remove you from that pool.”

He scoffed. “We aren’t taking any chances after Bakuda— that crazy bitch.” He hissed the last bit.

“She’s with the Guild now, I hear,” I said. “It’s pretty hush-hush, very probationary, and Dragon has the final say.”

Leet furrowed his brow. He had reacted when I mentioned Dragon — the world’s greatest Tinker.

“You can build anything, Leet, but you can only build it once. The Guild has shown time and time again that they can mass-produce Tinkertech. How would you like to work for Dragon? The greatest Tinker in the world?”

“As if that’s something they’d let me,” he said, and looked down.

“Lung. Bakuda. Night. Victor. Othala,” I listed. “If I tell Armsmaster to put in a word with the DA, for getting you a probationary Guild membership? He’s going to do it.”

“What about Über?”

I looked over at the other guy. His head was lolling down on his chest.

“The man who can do anything? He’d make a fine Protectorate hero — though you probably won’t be working on the same team,” I said. “But there’s no reason why you’d have to stop being friends.”

Leet didn’t say anything.

“It’s either that, or I put both of you in the hospital with broken femurs. I really can’t take the chance — Faultline’s crew is already against me.”

Leet scowled at me.

“Think about it — you’ll have a huge budget, the oversight and assistance of competent Tinkers, the backing of the Law— I mean, you’re already small-time villains. People adore you. Think of what they would think of you if you were a real hero.”

He looked at Über again. I needed an angle, something that could motivate him. He was after fame — so much was evident from their website.

“Here’s an idea,” I said. “You can build anything once, right?”

Leet looked at me. “What of it?”

“Tell them you want to help build a weapon that can kill an Endbringer.”

There was a glint in his eye. “That’s—” he said. “Damn.”

I let him think about it for a little.

Leet balked when I drew a knife. “Hey, you said you weren’t going to hurt us—”

“I’m not,” I said, and cut my palm. Then I took the key to Leet’s cuffs, and uncuffed him. “Hand.”

He flinched at the command, and held out his palm. I put the knife in it.

“Cut yourself,” I said.

“What?”

“Swear a blood oath. You, Leet, swear to put in all your wit, skill, and power to kill an Endbringer. And should we meet in the field when you are a hero, that you will spare no mercy and fight my villainous self as a true hero would.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Hardcore,” he said, and cut himself, wincing from the pain. We shook, and his snapshot unfolded like a fractal to my power.

“I believe in you, Leet,” I said. With a thought, I cleared his system of toxins, metabolic waste, and infections; it wasn’t quite eight hours of sleep but it’d perk him up.

I withdrew my hand, and Leet looked at his. “What was that?”

“I have stimulants instead of blood,” I said enigmatically. “I’m going to wake up Über now — rest assured, I’ll only scratch him.”

Then I did the same to Über — cut his palm, and cleared the anaesthetic from his system, bringing him back to the land of wakefulness.

“Leet, bring your friend up to speed,” I said. “I’ll call Armsmaster. And Leet?”

He looked at me.

“Killing an Endbringer was never my idea.”

* * *

Inside the shed, Leet started talked animatedly to Über, and I dialed.

“Armsmaster,” came the cordial voice from the speaker.

“Para Bellum here,” I said. “So, about that bad habit of mine — I’ve got Über and Leet in cuffs. They say they want to give up their villain ways— I don’t know what’s gotten into him, but Leet thinks he can help build some kind of anti-Endbringer weapon.”


	90. 10001

Two PRT vans arrived on site, as well as Armsmaster. I had long since made a hasty retreat to a nearby rooftop, after tying Über up with a length of nylon rope, and cuffing his legs together as well.

On said nearby rooftop, I had laid with my SMG’s sights set on the open shed door, ready to shoot if they were stupid enough to escape anyway.

Once the area had been cordoned off as a crime scene, and the two idiots were in custody, I made my way to the other end of the storage unit complex, to get my prize.

* * *

Six thousand dollars, in partially sequential, unmarked bills. It wouldn’t do much good for buying high-profile stuff, but grocers and black-market sellers would accept it obliviously.

> 
>         uber and leet in prt custody. abt 6k cash.
>       

I texted Lisa. She replied quickly.

> 
>         You work commendably fast.
>       

And I went on to the next item on my to-do list.

* * *

As I made my way to Lisa’s place, I thought about what the two new motes of power I had been granted might be. There wasn’t any real difference I could detect, apart from the speed-up.

My gear was stowed back in the aluminum case, in the basement of the now apparently entirely abandoned apartment building. And I had gotten the bright idea to call and ask the Number Man if he could pick up the cash.

He could. I’d left the duffel bag in a garbage container in an alley, and soon after received a confirmation text. I suspected teleporter shenanigans at this point.

Using a few bills of the stolen money I had pocketed, I brought her a coffee.

She opened the door with a blonde wig on her head. “Hi.”

“Costume?” I asked, pointing, handing her the cup.

“Yup.” She genned me inside, shut the door, and held out her arm.

I snorted. “Not even going to ask me anymore?”

“We both know you want me to get busy Thinkering, so… Get busy healing.”

I obliged, and made a small cut in her arm. “Three things,” I said. “We need to find out what my new powers do; I need to know where Coil’s mercenaries go for drinks — preferably a woman—: and I need you to make a dox-bomb on his mercenary staff so I can—” I stopped.

There was something odd in my powers — in the ‘view,’ for lack of a better term, I had of Lisa. It was a lot closer to the way I saw myself.

“What is it?” Lisa asked.

“Let me just—” I said. With a thought, I started downloading a skill— but not for myself.

I’d observed the actual process that this entailed, and I was quite convinced nothing could go wrong. My power was following a sort of script when I did it. But now, I was doing it to Lisa.

“Ich glaub, mich laust der Affe,” I muttered, a minute later — both as a sentiment, and as a test.

“What—” Lisa said. “Wait— Ich glaub, es hackt! You— I—” Her eyes widened comically.

“Yes,” I said. “So… That’s interesting.”

“This is a game changer,” Lisa said, and took off the wig, looking bewildered.

“Let’s get started on turning you into a junior intelligence specialist,” I said. “Should only take an hour.”

* * *

Once Lisa could hold her own in close-quarters against world-champion martial artists, speak a number of languages, handle rifles and knives like she had been born with them, and a bunch of other little things, we got started on the next thing.

“Hello. I am Coil.”

Lisa shook her head. “Too… Unemotional. Coil is… Smug. Always smug. Always knowing.”

She was sitting with an icepack on her head — insisting that I not deal with her headache until she was done ‘integrating’ her new skills with her power.

I had bound my chest and slipped into the homemade replica bodysuit. We had sussed out his voice and now we were trying to reverse engineer his mannerisms.

“And don’t monologue. He never does that. Always plays with his cards close to the chest.”

* * *

It was twilight by the time I had perfected my Coil impression. Back in the abandoned apartment complex in our territory, I taped several videos where he took credit for various heinous acts of terrorism.

Then I texted ahead to Regent and Brian, that I was going to come visit.


	91. 10010

Regent had taken the luxury of renting a motel room. A wise move, all things considered. Motels were cheap, and the one he had found was particularly run down, and I suspected he had done the renting through a mastered pawn of some sort.

The room itself was plain and not particularly clean. A table, some chairs, two beds, a TV, and an adjacent bathroom. He was sitting on one of the beds.

“So, what are you here for?” he asked me.

I got straight to the point: “Lisa and I discovered that my power escalates every time I use my power on others parahumans. Ever since I killed Victor, I’ve had the ability to acquire the skills of anyone I’ve used my power on.”

Alec nodded.

“I took out Über and Leet earlier today, and the ability I got from Über synergies nicely — I can now pass said skills on to others. Which means that in the interest of team-efficiency, I’m going to teach you to fight. Arm.”

He held his arm out and I made the necessary incision.

“Any wishes?” I asked.

He looked at me, indifferent. “What can you do?”

“Anything. Languages, martial arts, medicine, cooking…” I listed.

“Whatever you think is wise,” he said.

I hadn’t expected him to defer to my judgement like that. Was he really that lacking in initiative? “No preferences at all?”

He shrugged. “You’re about a million times smarter than me,” he said. “You wouldn’t waste time teaching me things you weren’t sure would be good for — what’s the word — mission success rates and/or my survival.”

I nodded. Alec was smart.

We sat there for two minutes before Alec asked if he could watch TV. Consequently we spent almost an hour sitting in that motel room, watching crap TV. My power had it’s own ‘attention span’ if that was an apt description, so I could have struck up conversation.

But by unspoken agreement neither of us did. Occasionally, Alec would shift positions — he ended up lying on his stomach with his head in the foot-end, propped up on one arm and two pillows.

“Done,” I said, and took my thumb off his arm.

Alec looked at his hands. “It doesn’t feel any different…” He rose from the bed, and stretched lazily. I got up with him.

“So, I’m like, an expert marksman-slash-martial artist now?”

“How about a demonstration?” I threw a punch at him. He dodged and parried effortlessly, flowing into a counter-attack. ‘Skills’ were a funny amalgamate of analytical pattern-matching and learned reflexes like that. I didn’t let him land the punch aimed at my side, instead going into a leg-catch and throwing him onto the floor.

All in good fun, I stepped back, and Alec started to rise, then stopped, laid down on his back again and did a kip-up.

“Nice,” he said and rolled his shoulders. “Gonna have to find a sparring partner.”

“Pick up a pistol too,” I said. “Drive a car. And spend some time thinking about squad tactics.”

“Will do,” he said. “Thanks for the upgrade.”

Alec was an entirely different person when he wasn’t bantering off against Brian or Lisa. It was interesting. Solidarity amongst sociopaths. Not that I was a true sociopath — I just hadn’t had a reason to feel remorse. But an outside observer might erroneously conclude so.

* * *

I needed a scooter. Going to Brian’s took almost an hour by bus. At this rate I would have to defer the trip to Rachel’s until the morning.

At the mention of lasagna and scented candles, I was let in.

“Hey,” Brian said.

“Aisha?” I asked.

“At my father’s, I hope,” he replied.

I nodded, and began explaining in detail right off the bat — about Lisa’s discovery, the decision to test it, Über and Leet, and my new power. We went into the kitchen, and I looked through his fridge and cupboards for something to turn into dinner.

“Why did you got to Alec first?” Brian asked.

“Guinea pig,” I said, truthfully. I had know he would have no objections as long as it was ultimately a benefit to him.

Brian nodded. “So you want to do the same to me?”

“I understand if you’re apprehensive — I know you prize your athleticism—”

“Sign me up!” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. That was not the response I had expected; and I was already updating my mental model of athletes in general and Brian in particular when he began explaining.

“You’re offering me a cheat-code, basically; only instead of wrecking myself like steroids would, and instead of taking time away from you know — useful and fun stuff — like training hard would, it is going to take what… A few hours?”

I nodded.

“I know you used your power to make yourself stronger — would it be too much trouble to ask for that too?”

I shook my head. “It’s a lot more extensive, and I’m still ironing out the kinks, to be honest. Skills and such is only the brain — move a neuron here, grow a new one there. Small stuff.”

Brian nodded, grinning. “I’ve always wanted to be able to actually fight some of the hard-hitting guys out there. I just settled for it never really being in the cards.”


	92. 10011

We ate curry and rice for dinner, watched a three-hour director’s cut of a movie while I etched an impressive array of skills into Brian’s cortices at his request: sleight of hand, lock picking, deception and manipulation techniques, motorcycling, getaway driving, mental arithmetic, mnemonic techniques, speed reading, wrestling, kick-boxing, stick fighting, knife fighting, military martial arts, squad tactics, military strategy, marksmanship, even things like finance…

The thing about a skill was that it wasn’t at all like a role playing game. Martial arts, for instance, was a complex mix of rote movements, learned reflexes, and pattern matching ability. Sleight of hand involved just as much people reading, as dexterity.

“What about lovemaking?” Brian asked me. “Isn’t that a ‘skill’ too?”

I pondered that.

We ended up testing it thoroughly.

* * *

I left for Rachel’s dog shelter early in the morning, picking up coffee and pastries on the way — at a cheaper place nearby.

Rachel was up and about already, seemingly had been for hours. Her sleeping bag was rolled up, and I could see she had made use of the portable stove. She looked a lot better, all things considered.

“What do you want?” she asked, neutrally.

“I think I can use my power to train your dogs,” I said.

Rachel cocked her head.

“As it turns out, I don’t only get memories and skills from people I heal. Every time I heal a cape, I get a little something extra,” I smiled. “And now I can teach skills too.”

“Like what?”

I grinned. “As of last night Lisa can speak fluent Spanish and shoot a guys brains out at eight hundred yards with a decent rifle. Alec can probably kick your ass in a fistfight, and Brian can lie to a polygraph.” She wasn’t appreciating my humor. “And a lot of other stuff, of course, that’s just a few examples.”

Rachel looked around her at the eleven dogs in the room.

“Wouldn’t you like to have eleven top-trained dogs?”

She nodded. “Try Sirius first. He’s unruly and doesn’t listen. If it works on him, try Bullet next, she’d be an asset — after you fixed her shoulder I’m grooming her to be Angelica’s replacement.”

“In any case,” I said. “Perhaps we should start with you?”

Rachel looked back at me.

* * *

The first thing I did, was patching a rather large hole in her education. It took only a few minutes.

“Are we done?” Rachel asked as I withdrew my fingertip from the cut on her arm.

“No, it’s going to take about an hour, probably,” I said.

“Why’d you bring those?” Rachel asked me, as I took a stack of books out of my bag. I’d gone home to pick them up.

“Well,” I said. “You said ‘whatever you think is useful,’ yeah?”

She furrowed her brows.

Rachel was illiterate; due to abusive upbringing and lack of schooling. Now, I had brought her up to above-average reading level.

“You can read now. I thought I’d give you something to read.”

I handed her the book.

Rachel took it from me. She opened it on the first page, and started reading aloud — I’d seen her read something once, slowly mouthing along the words.

“Maggie Holt had two dads,” she began, “a checkered scarf she loved, a stranger’s notebook which was full of real magic spells, and a curse that damned her to three times go through fire and madness. So far, she was pretty sure she had gone through one of those already…”

She looked up at me. Rachel didn’t emote a lot, but I could tell she was feeling a whole lot of things.

I said: “It’s a story about a girl who goes through a lot of bad shit, and comes out of it with an army of goblins. It’s very… You.”

Rachel shrugged. “It’s… Weird. To read.”

“You get used to it.”

She nodded. “Thanks. There’s not a lot of things to do here.”

In truth, I had wished I could do something about her social issues; but from my previous assessments, it seemed that had gotten nixed by her powers. When I had investigated, I’d gotten the distinct impression that trying to fix that aspect of her problems would inhibit her ability to relate to dogs.

“Oh, and you can also text,” I said. “So now we don’t have to call all the time.”

“Useful,” she said, and started reading, while I went back to working on her brain with my power. One of the smaller dogs came up to her and laid down in her lap. Lacking a free hand, I resorted to scratch it on Rachel’s behalf.

It took almost all day to impress the requisite skills on all eleven dogs. Rachel tried her hand at cooking — I had given her mostly the same combat and tactical knowledge as he others, and then augmented it with wilderness survival. Cooking, navigation, hunting, skinning, woodworking.

As we went, Rachel would alternate between reading voraciously and checking the dogs whenever I finished with one. Teaching dogs was somewhat different, but I had twelve reference points and a suspicion that whatever power I had gotten from Rachel was helping out.

Rachel was grinning a little more maliciously than some people might like when we were done. She had experimentally grown the most unruly mutts to the point where aggression usually became a problem, only for them to stay perfectly obedient.

Now we had an army.

“Can you grow all of them at once?” I asked.

“As far as I know, yeah; no problem. Only taxing if I do it too fast, push too hard,” she said.

Now I grinned as well.


	93. 10100

Using Lisa’s notes, I started shadowing Coil’s mercenaries. Regrettably, he had barracks for them to stay in, and it seemed they spent most of their free-time in. A reasonably security precaution in a world where Strangers existed.

Coil’s compounds were archetypical god-damn supervillain lairs. Huge, underground, staffed with trained soldiers. He was filthy rich — untold fortunes and companies were essentially his to command. He hadn’t whitewashed the money we’d stolen, he had just brought it from us. For fun.

Using said assets, he had constructed these elaborate lairs under various construction projects. One of his corporate assets was an Endbringer-shelter construction firm, which easily supplied the know-how and labour to construct these things. All concrete hallways and metal doors, if Lisa was to be believed.

Two of three were under active construction sites, meaning he could disguise comings and goings as construction work in progress. Helpfully, Lisa had flagged things like the ventilation shafts, electrical connections, and water mains; all the vital infrastructure.

In essence, I knew everything I needed about Coil to begin my operation. I had all the cards in place, all the pieces just needed to be set in motion.

Thursday went with casually traveling about the entirety of Brockton Bay to set up; coding the last pieces of malware; writing out instructions to be transmitted on dead-man switches. It was mentally backbreaking work — sneaking about, cross-referencing, following explosives-handling protocol.

I had the stealth of an assassin, and a deep knowledge of psychology, but still, it took long hours.

I had the mental acumen that geniuses dream of, and a strong talent for coding, but still, it took long hours.

Not sleeping helped.

I queried Lisa at an ungodly hour to ask whether the PRT was onto something being up. I had to placate her with promises of morning coffee and a touch-up from my power.

* * *

Friday evening saw me dressed in my best, brandishing a fake ID, looking like I was me, but also a twenty-two year old woman of indeterminate Caribbean descent. The bar I was going into was a seedy little place called Somer’s Rock, in the Docks.

As far as I could discern it was a place frequented by Henchmen, and occasionally used for Villain meet-ups as neutral ground. And by Henchmen, that meant the masked, professional variety. The punch-clock villains. The mercenaries. Gang bangers were distinctly unwelcome here.

The interior was old — grays dominated, and the walls bore telltale signs of nicotine damage, despite the no-smoking sign. There were free-standing tables and booths, and… Apparently, every server knew sign language. Were they all deaf? It would be a neat gimmick, if not for the prevalence of recording equipment in this day and age.

I made a mental note to always carry a camera and microphone with me.

Coil’s mercenary group took leave in shifts, spending a few days out in the city, between the stays in his barracks. In here, were four of them; three men, one woman, all wearing battledress trousers and black shirts.

As luck would have it, she was both my size, and — Lisa confirmed — at least a little interested in women.

* * *

‘Dressed in my best’ here meant combat boots, stonewashed, ripped jeans, and a low-cut, very tight babydoll tee Lisa had provided. With melanin black and red, I had adorned my skin with fake tattoos, reddened my lips, and defined my eyes.

The four weren’t the only patrons here, but the others — undoubtedly at least some civilians — weren’t of interest to me. I stepped up to the bar and ordered a pint of beer in sign language, to the surprise of the barkeep.

Drink in hand, I went over to the table with the four soldiers. “Hey. Hench?” I asked — deliberatly altering my demeanor and tone to be as far removed from normal as possible.

They looked at me with suspicion.

“I’m just asking ’cus, you know— I am one,” I said. “And you fit the profile.”

One of the guys gave me a once-ove. He was lean, white, buzzcut, probably mid-thirties, and with a nose that had been broken. “What kinda work?”

“Retainer,” I said. “Degree in accounting — have to pay my student loans somehow, right? Also, used to be in a girl-gang in high school, so I know my way around a balaclava and a tire-iron when the boss needs it.”

“Oh man — to work a desk job,” the biggest of the three men said. A bearded ginger, making me think almost a knee-jerk of ‘scottish.’

The last guy was black — darker than my brian; bald, and older than the others.

“Sit, drink, gripe about our parahuman overlords,” the woman said. She was black-haired, short-haired, with pale white skin. She had a scar on her chin — the ugly kind.

* * *

Samantha, she called herself. It took me twenty-six minutes of smalltalk, griping, and pheromone-aided haptic manipulation to plant the seed of suggestion in her mind.

It took a dart-game to give us the privacy neccesary for me to really make eyes at her. Some part of my mind protested that this was too easy. It was. It was also thrilling — in a scientific sense.

There was no attraction towards her. She was an asset, and I never wavered once from my objective. Outwards, I played the role perfectly.

* * *

Without their female friend, the other’s went barhopping further, hoping to get lucky like Sam had.

“I have a place nearby— Drinks at my place?” I asked.

“You seem eager to get me into bed,” Sam replied.

“Oh you wouldn’t fucking believe,” I began. “He can smell it— whenever I fuck someone? He always comments on it the next day. It’s so fucking creepy.”

“Damn.”

“I’ve got the weekend off. If you’re good enough in bed, I’m keeping you there ’till Sunday morning,” I said, and pulled her into a passionate kiss.


	94. 10101

It almost felt bad. Sam wasn’t a decent person, but the only wrong she had done me was being on Coil’s payroll. I led her to an apartment complex where I had lifted the keys off a tenant before coming to Somer’s Rock, pretending to bump into him in the street, and using his wallet contents to find his address.

If Sam didn’t figure something was up by the time she smelled the inside of the apartment, she did when Regent stepped out of the kitchen, into the living room.

“Shit—” she said, and her hand immediately reached for her phone in a pocket. I grabbed her wrist, and she made a backwards kick against me, which I dodged. Then Regent made her leg twitch, and I put her into a submission hold. Then Regent tazed her to make sure.

* * *

“You’re that fucking Master—” she said. “Oh, yeah, I’ve been briefed.”

Alec was amused. We had cuffed Sam and tied her to a chimney on the roof.

“You’re one of Heartbreaker’s fucked up kids. I bet this little skank is your toy, huh?” She spat. “I knew it was too good to be true — hot piece of ass like that would come into the Rock looking for…”

“Actually,” I said. “I’m his boss. You are the toy here. Or you will be.” Then I reached in and pulled a push-dagger out of her bra, and used it to cut her arm.

* * *

Regent… Mastered Samantha, while I took on her appearance. I’d never done bone remodeling before, but it wasn’t all that hard. Stifling my regret, I shaved my hair off with a trimmer, and started growing out Sam’s black. I saved the hair — not that I could re-attach it, and re-growing it would only take a few hours; it was mostly sentimentality.

Everything I could possibly need, I pulled directly from her snapshot — pass-codes, skills, mannerisms, thought patterns, banter, personal relationships…

Regent finished before me, and he made Samantha undress, and put on some spare clothes I had brought along.

It was two o’clock in the morning, when I was a virtual copy of Samantha. Regent allowed her freedom enough to react with shock and disgust when I presented myself to her: “Samantha — Sam for short.”

* * *

I alerted Brian and Rachel by text that we were starting. They didn’t know exactly what, only that Coil would now be our enemy.

Then I called the number Lisa had given me.

“Coil,” I said, with no small amount of venom. “Para Bellum speaking.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure,” came the reply.

“I’m going to flip a coin,” I said. “You’re going to call it in the air. If you get it right? Props to you. Get it wrong? Something bad happens.”

“And if I refuse?” Coil replied.

“I’m smart, imaginative, I don’t sleep, I’ve had a week to prepare, and Tattletale is my friend. Bio-weapons is one of many, many options at this point, but by all means, refuse to play my little game,” I said. “Call it in three, two, one—”

“Heads,” he said.

“You’ll know whether you got it right in an hour,” I said. “And by then, I’ll flip another coin. Just imagine what’ll happen if I can’t reach you…”

There was no actual coin to flip. I sent an e-mail to one of my puppet accounts — I’d rolled with my random generator circuit for which nasty thing Coil had in store, and gotten ‘pipe-bomb Calvert’s house.’ Lucky him.

The unwritten rule that one did not interfere with a Cape’s civilian life was there by mutual agreement, like the Geneva convention against war crimes. Trespass against others, and others would trespass against you.

* * *

At half past three, I called up Coil again from a different part of town, with a different burner phone. One of my servers kindly informed me of it not having blown up his house.

Undoubtedly, there was now a PRT bomb squad en route to disarm my little present.

Or perhaps not — the bomb could be linked to the Undersiders, to me. And it would have the PRT asking Calvert pointed questions about why Para Bellum was trying to blow up his house.

“Heads or Tails?” I drawled.

“Heads,” he said. The vocal stress in his voice was a bit higher.

“See you in an hour.”

This time, he was in for a malware attack against his mainframes, and a denial-of-service attack against the public faces of his assets.

* * *

A little bit after that, I got a call on Samantha’s phone.

“Sam,” I answered, taking care to sound tired, but blissful.

“Benny, I need you to report in, soldier. The boss has an emergency on his hands,” said my assumed persona’s platoon leader.

“Yes sir,” I said, and sighed. “Man, is this a bad time.”

“You heard it here first,” Benny replied. “Suck it up and report in.”

Now came the worst part. I reminded myself that Samantha was a remorseless killer for hire. Then I texted Regent the go-ahead, and began making my way to Coil’s base.


	95. 10110

The key to a successful Stranger gambit, was to incite rampant Paranoia. The point was not that I should infiltrate anything. That part could come later. The point was to make Coil doubt his every mercenary — put them in lockdown, stress them.

I reached the hidden gates to Coil’s compound, and found two paramilitary-clad guards at the gate. Samantha’s memory designated them as ‘Crow’ and ‘James.’

“What the—” James said, grasping for his radio. “We have a problem by the main gate.”

Crow leveled his rifle at me and I raised my arms in surprise. “What the shit, Crow?! It’s me, Sam!”

“Samantha just arrived at the front gate,” James said into his radio. “Affirmative, Master/Stranger protocol it is.”

“Master/Stranger? What happened?” I asked, exasperated. “C’mon guys, for fucks sake! It’s me!”

Crow kept his sights on me, and James took out a pair of handcuffs.

* * *

I ended up in an interrogation room. The plan was now as follows: Coil would by now have received a timed e-mail I had written earlier:

> 
>         Subject: Samantha
>     
>     One of these things is not like the other one. But by god,
>     don't be a smart ass --- killing both is a spectacularly bad idea.
>     One of them is really your loyal mercenary. You have my word.
>     
>     --- PB
>       

When he finally decided — perhaps, and hopefully assisted by Dinah Alcott — whichever one he chose as the real one, would lead to a nasty outcome.

If he decided the one Regent controlled was the real one, Regent would make her go on a rampage and probably kill a few other mercenaries before they shot her to death. Then it would be obvious that I was the real one, and I would quietly (or maybe not so quietly) slip away.

If he chose me as the real one, I’d slip away, and I had failed to specify what Regent was to do with Samantha then. Maybe he’d do nothing. Ideally Coil wouldn’t suspect a double gambit, but he was too smart for that. It was likely he would fire Samantha and tell her to skip town.

Either way, Coil lost trust in his mercenaries, and lost at least one mercenary as well. If he chose to kill Samantha, that would make his men lose trust in him. Killing was almost always a sign of weakness that way.

* * *

I got to sit in that interrogation room, cuffed to my chair, until the one-hour mark passed. Fortunately, Coil would now be receiving a call from Lisa. She didn’t know the specifics of the system, and I had asked her kindly not to look too closely at it.

She would ask for his call, and email it to the server, on my behalf. The best part, was that I had taught her vocal mimicry with my power. She could play me on the phone well enough to fool even Brian.

I heard a gunshot from outside, and my blood would have run cold if I’d let it. Regent must have screwed up somehow in mimicking Samantha — despite the notes I’d given him. It was to be expected, really. But still, Coil had just murdered one of his mercenaries in cold blood, it seemed.

A man Samantha was unfamiliar with came in, flanked by two of the other mercenaries that liked her the least.

“So, who or what are you, then?” he said. He was a very lean, black guy, black hair, graying at the temples. He wore a suit.

“Wh—” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?! I’m the real Sam! Whoever you just killed, I bet you can autopsy her and find out she’s an imposter!”

“Oh, we’re convinced she was. Likely under Regent’s control. Which would make her the real Samantha, and you…” he said.

Who the hell was this guy? Where had he gotten this intel? Was it Dinah’s power Coil had been pulling on?

“Look, test me, ask me my passwords, I’m telling you, I’m the real Samantha. I’m loyal to the boss so long as he pays me; and I’m sure as hell not being paid to sit in an interrogation room. You caught the imposter, we’re done!”

He looked at me, impartially, and began asking questions.

* * *

I answered like Samantha would in any and all cases, mimicking the flustered mannerisms she would have displayed when asked about her personal details. I was certain I got every question spot on, but the man must have taken a muscle relaxant or something — he was very hard to read.

After the tenth question, I began considering whether he knew the answers to any of the questions.

Probably not, then.

After forty-seven questions he let up, and left, leaving me with the two armed guards.

“So, now you two are privy to my innermost secrets, huh?” I drawled.

“Don’t give a shit,” one of them said.

That was all the conversation that needed to be done here. I leaned back in my chair, and started planning ahead — I didn’t have a solid exit strategy, but then again I had come here not knowing what to expect. I had the general layout of the complex, and the more I saw of it, the better.

The interrogator returned, fifteen minutes later. In the meantime, Lisa would have given Coil another call.

“Free her,” he said. “You’re going to be kept under observation for forty-eight hours. You’ll be off guard duty, and without access to guns or communications.”

“Damn,” I said, with a chuckle. “That sounds like you’re trying to bore me to death. Better than a bullet, though.”


	96. 10111

The two guards led me down to the barracks — no doubt they would lock me in Sam’s room. I’d have to make my escape before-hand.

In the fifteen minute grace period, I had bitten my nails into sharp, ragged points. I put my power into furiously laboring at my fingertips while walking and opened up a sore beneath each. I walked with my hands in my pockets, just for safety, and slowly enough to give me an extra dozen seconds or so, but not seeming tardy. We were about to round the final bend, when I struck.

Their faces were exposed, and I flailed my arms back and upwards, using my superhuman speed, and my improvised claws struck home, piercing flesh, and giving me access to their bodies. Ignoring the explosion of information, I sent both of them into seizures.

Quickly, I relieved one of them of his SMG and sprinted towards the barracks — same direction as the exit.

The alarm went off within twenty seconds, just as I entered the garage and the gate came into view. The seven mercenaries in the room made the connection almost instantly, between the alarm and my storming in brandishing a weapon and dove for cover, pulling pistols.

I ran, and the gun sang in my hands. Return fire was scarce — there were people on either side of the garage, and I was headed between them. Still, I was hit four times, from the same shooter, though to much lesser effect than what Victor had done to me. One of the shots took out the ball joint in my hip, and I had to seriously readjust, holding the joint together with my power.

Mere seconds later, I reached the still-closing gate, and shimmied sideways through. It caught my knee, and I caught two bullets in my calf, before I could dislocate my foot, and forcefully pull through — damage be damned.

Once outside, I ran — best as I could on two ruined legs, which was barely enough to qualify as ‘Olympian,’ but still quite well — and disappeared into the night. Behind me, I heard vehicles ride out.

That had been too close, but I needed to stir up the hornet’s nest.

* * *

My first move as soon as I reached a safe haven was to get the whole story. Regent picked up his phone quickly.

“Regent, what happened on your end?” I asked. “Why’d they kill her?”

“They didn’t—” he began, and I realized I’d been played. Of course Coil would figure out which one of us was Samantha under Regent’s control — even if I’d engineered a chain of events that was fairly symmetrical to thwart his use of Dinah’s oracular abilities.

Perhaps he’d even figured out it was me in there. All it would take was some amount of information about the true nature of my powers, a bit of imagination, a solid helping of the right kind of pessimism, and asking his oracle whether Para Bellum would be the one calling him to prompt him for a coin toss.

And he wouldn’t antagonize his mercenaries by killing one.

On the other hand, even if he knew I was a near perfect Stranger, he probably wouldn’t tell the PRT — they’d only ask how he knew.

“— she was bound and gagged, apparently given one last major paycheck, then tossed in a car and driven out of my range.”

That was a very thorough counter to Regent’s power.

“Pursue her if you like,” I said. “But ultimately, it’s inconsequential… Nice work.”

“Any time,” he replied.

I hung up and dialed Lisa to touch base.

Lisa’s handling of my absence had been amicable, and Coil had avoided a bombing at one of his side-lairs. The speedup of my powers was noticeable, but not very impressive — still, it would mean I would be out of disguise and in better health by late morning, rather than noon.

Off-center gunshot wounds to the chest, mostly missing major organs, two gunshot wounds to the calf, dislocated foot, several fractures, shattered hip joint. Making my escape in a dead run though the streets in the early morning didn’t make it any better — but then the alternative was getting caught and shot at by Coil’s men.

Interesting that — going over the events; neither Samantha nor the two men I had incapacitated had ever really shot to kill, and all my bullet wounds seemed to be from one shooter. I’d once read that in war, most soldiers didn’t make confirmed kills, but now I had experienced it on myself.

* * *

Healing my injuries also included fixing my hair, and undoing the structural changes I’d made to mimic Samantha. Pushing it a bit, I could make my hair grow by an inch per hour. A round-the-clock pizza joint provided the necessary protein, and an abandoned apartment served as my makeshift base. It felt good to be back in ballistics gear, armed to the teeth.

I hung up and dialed Coil again. “Head or Tails?”

“Heads,” Coil said.

“You know,” I continued. “Your mercenaries are going to be leery now. You killed one of them, and let something which looked like her get away.”

He hung up. No sense in giving away the fact that his little ruse hadn’t worked.


	97. 11000

Dawn broke and I was almost back to feeling like myself again. It was about time to expect resistance — sure, we were well hidden, but at some point we’d have to congregate and attack.

Coil avoided two more nasty explosive devices, as well as a full reveal of his identity being leaked on the net.

Without his power, he would be just a smart gangster, and I was smarter than him. He had Dinah, but I had Tattletale.

With my computer in my lap, sitting on the floor in ballistics gear in an empty apartment, with a pace of cold pizza in my mouth, I began to type

> 
>         From: Para Bellum
>     Subject: What your boss isn't telling you
>     
>     Crow
>     
>     Your lives are majorly at risk, and it is my doing. Several
>     nasty things (bombs and worse) sit on triggers decided by your
>     boss' ability to predict coin flips over the phone.
>     
>     I have horrible things in store for all of you. You saw the
>     thing that wasn't Samantha, you saw what Regent did to the real
>     one.
>     
>     --- PB
>       

Finding the e-mails of all the mercenaries Coil had on retainer was some of the earliest work Lisa did.

By my count, the two mercenaries I incapacitated should still have been unconscious — I hadn’t done anything to them a few days bed rest wouldn’t clear up. I reached for one of the disposable cell-phones and dialled a number I pulled from the memory of one of the two.

In a raspy voice I breathed hoarsely into the receiver.

“Who is this?”

“Biff?” I asked.

“Who is this?”

“It’s John,” I said.

“Yeah, pull the other one. John is in a coma.”

“She trapped me, Biff. The bitch. Samantha. I can’t move. Help.”

There was silence one the other end of the line. I hung up and grinned in glee. Gaslighting was a whole lot of fun. Then I dialled a close friend of the other guy. Pretending to have major Stranger powers would have Coil jumping at shadows.

Hopefully.

There were a few obstacles to remove before I could get my hands on him, and I had less than twenty-four hours to do so.

> 
>         I need bearings on Faultline's and the Travellers.
>       

There was a few seconds wait before I got a reply from Lisa.

> 
>         On it. Might need a 'booster shot' soon.
>       

* * *

The matter at hand now was how to properly destroy Coil. With his power out of the race, his assets at hand was his mercenaries and his cape muscle. Apart from the double-threat, he had a handful that Lisa had identified: a plant in the Merchants, an pending job-offer to a duo in Boston, and a lone-wolf with a grab-bag of powers.

“I think we might have to belay the whole ‘take Coil’s hired cronies out of the equation’ part of your gambit,” Lisa said. “The PRT is aware of your bombs now. And it seems they are—”

I shot off a text. “They think I’m the one behind it? Coil’s work.”

Lisa nodded. “He leaked it through some channels.”

I nodded and wrote another text:

> 
>         not a smart move, snake man.
>       

The first message had set into motion a chain of events that would culminate in a video of Coil taking credit for the bombs being uploaded to several video hosting sites, and sent to several news outlets.

If he had made a mistake like this, it had to mean he was getting desperate.

“It puts a stark deadline on our operation as well,” I said. “We need to get the team back together.”


	98. 11001

We met up in our territory in an abandoned warehouse, and I beheld the awesome spectacle we now made.

Bitch had jacked a van to transport her dogs — yesterday she couldn’t drive.

Grue had gotten his hand on a pair of nightsticks and carried himself with the same projected lethality that highly trained military personnel did.

Regent had somehow gotten his hand on a suppressed handgun with a high-shine chrome finish all over. A German model.

Tattletale was more or less the same, save for the inclusion of more knives and a suitcase-sized piece of tech which I guessed was a ruggedized laptop.

I was in my lighter gear: the blue army fatigues, ballistics vest and protective gear befitting a SWAT officer. My trusty bullpub SMG hang at the small of my back and my striped batons and knives nicely complemented my striped sleeves. The only new addition to my kit was a sling.

Two chords and a basket of leather, and a mid-sized bag full of rocks. A non-lethal option for ranged attacks.

“You guys look good,” I said. “We’re going to need a bigger car, or more cars. Grue, Regent, go commit grand theft auto. Tattletale, I need intel; how much can you get me—”

“Stole some consumer drones yesterday night,” she said. “They’ll give us areal view.”

“Splendid. Bitch, get started on the dogs.”

* * *

While the others worked, I activated a part of my Coil-harassment infrastructure which would stand by to detonate all of the bombs I had left, optionally excluding the bio-weapons.

Then I called Coil one last time.

“Heads or tails?” I asked.

“Tails,” he said.

Regent and Grue came back with a transport truck, having ambushed and tied up the workers so as to prevent them from alerting the authorities. We left in it; me behind the wheel, Tattletale and Regent beside me in the cabin, Grue with Bitch in the back, who was buffing up the dogs.

* * *

Coil’s base was situated quite centrally in Brockton Bay, but not in any way in a nice part of town. We parked the truck up against an alley, and under the cover of Grue’s darkness, we snuck the already enlarged canines in. So far we had evaded detection according to Tattletale.

“It was getting cramped in there,” Grue said.

We spent five minutes rigging the dogs with chains for riding, and for them to grow large enough to ride. Bitch’s power worked by touch to initiate and proximity to maintain so far as I could tell. As soon as the chance presented itself, we mounted and rode the dogs up the building sides onto the roofs. I was on Bullet, the others each had their own dog. Five riders, five mounts, six in reserve.

We made our way towards Coil’s base with three eyes in the sky trailing us. Coil’s base came into view as we rounded a corner, and the two guards in front lost their footing courtesy Regent. We smashed through the fencing surrounding the perimeter, and the alarm went off. The main gates, sequestered away in the parking basement were no doubt closing now, but we made a beeline for the basement anyway.

As soon as I, riding vanguard, entered the parking basement, an enormous thing crashed into me, and I was thrown off Bullet, narrowly managing to land well. It was some sort of rhinoceros-like monster.

Genesis. According to official PRT ratings, a Changer 9. According to Tattletale’s dossier, a Master. The monster was a projection. I heard Bitch whistle an attack command and another dog hammered into it on my behalf.

Unceremoniously, I drew my gun and opened fire, peppering the beast in armor-piercing ammunition while two dogs descended on it, ripping it to shreds. It was already starting to dissolve into nothing.

A wave of darkness entered, trailing after Grue as the rearguard — he had cloaked the outside in darkness to prevent anyone coming in that way. The three guards by the gate were all having difficulties standing up, while Regent and Tattletale closed in on them. Bitch took to the center of the garage to direct her dogs. Atop Brutus with her shield, surrounded by her monsters, she looked positively dignified.

The peace didn’t last. With an enormous crash, part of the ceiling collapsed, and three mannequins dropped down, landing upright somehow. The mannequins were quickly swapped out with Trickster, Ballistic, and Sundancer.

Even as the event had taken place, I had loaded my sling, and the first thing that happened was that Sundancer took a golf-ball sized pebble to the upper sternum hard enough to break bone.

Another crash came in the other end of the garage, and I spun to see perfectly cut segments of concrete fall. Faultline’s cutting power.

“Sladrehank, bryd hovedporten! Gru, Tæve, tag Forkastning og kompagni! Regent med mig, på Balistik og Svindler” I shouted. As an added bonus I had taught all of us Danish; a sufficiently obscure language that we could use it for semi-secure tactical chatter.

Tattletale whistled for two dogs to start ramming the main gate. Grue dismounted and submerged one side of the garage in darkness, while Bitch whistled for the remaining dogs to follow. Regent and I turned our attention to Ballistic and Trickster.

I began swinging my sling, and nodded to Regent as he came up beside me. “Få dem til at kaste op. Jeg skyder, og hvis Trickster bytter plads med en af os, brug dit scepter. Hold øje med Balistik.”

“Go’ plan, chæf,” he replied.

He raised both hands in a forceful gesture. I flung my rock at Trickster, and found myself next to Ballistic.

Knowing the trajectory of my sling stone, I ducked into a leg-sweep, just as I heard Ballistic gurgle, bile rising forcefully in his throat. Despite it, he managed to jump over my attack, and a ball-bearing leapt from his hand into my thigh like a bullet.

So long as he wasn’t shooting Regent, I was happy. Disregarding the injury, I charged at him with a drawn baton, and unleashed a quick series of blows, ending the combo with a kick to his head, sending him tumbling. A glance to the side told me Regent had subdued Trickster.

Further away, the battle against Faultline’s crew was… Pandemonium.


	99. 11010

“Stay down if you want to live,” I said to Ballistic and Sundancer, then I sprinted into the fray.

Newter had taken out two dogs, and was now headed for Tattletale. Half of the entire parking garage was no longer cars and concrete, but some kind of wood. In the midst of it stood Labyrinth. Spitfire and Gregor were using their respective powers to keep the dogs at bay while Faultline was fighting Grue.

Labyrinth would alter the terrain around Grue, as well as keep his darkness at bay. Faultline was exploiting her cutting power to cut hazardous pieces of scenery to try and have it fall on Grue. Darkness was billowing off him.

“Regent!” I shouted, and pointed. Regent flicked his hand and Newt stumbled mid sidestep, allowing Tattletale to hit him with her taser.

I loaded my sling and let a stone fly. A branch grew in my way, intercepting what would have put Spitfire out of commission much like Sundancer. Cursing under my breath, I started running, only to be pounced from behind. I tumbled and came face to face with a gangly, clawed monster.

Genesis. Again. I whistled, for Bullet, and drew my SMG. The monster moved quicker than I thought possible, and swatted my weapon away. With my free hand, I caught it’s wrist, and it responded by digging its claws into my arm. My iron grip unwavering, and the monster was clearly built for speed rather than strength.

I slashed it across the arm with a knife and dove a finger into the wound. Genesis’ monsters were physical biology, manifested ex nihilo. It’s bizarre biology exploded into my head, and the monster exploded into goop.

Undeterred I dove for my rifle and resumed running for the battle, holstering it and loading my sling again.

I passed the invisible divide of Labyrinth’s power, and vines and branches started growing up around me, forcing me to slow, though not appreciably. I headed directly for Spitfire, forcing Labyrinth to either defend her friend from me, or let her friend defend her from the dogs.

Spitfire spewed a plume of fire at me and whatever napalm-like substance she produced coated me. My flame-retardant fatigues would protect me for the few seconds I needed. Contrary to her expectations, I emerged knee-first from the fire and smashed into her mask and face.

Without losing momentum, I continued towards Labyrinth. Gregor turned and sprayed me with something sticky which put out some of the fire. The six steps up to the motionless Shaker was doubly impeded by the faster-growing branches and the glue.

It must have been some sight — partially on fire and covered in gloop, forcing my way through branches.

Despite all my brute strength, I only barely made it to her, just enough to touch my stun gun to her neck. She went down like a sack of potatoes, and the branches started withering instantly.

“We surrender!” Faultline yelled.

Bitch whistled a command, for the dogs to threaten rather than hurt.

I turned to Gregor, surrounded by giant canines. “I’m on fire. Put me out.”

He looked to Faultline who nodded, then hit me with a spray of foam from his hand. I’d be healing some second-degree burns.

“Now dissolve this goop, please.”

He closed his translucent eyelids for a moment, then showered me with some kind of solvent.

“Bellum!” Tattletale yelled. “It’s a distraction! Coil is escaping!”

I didn’t waste breath on barking orders. “Bullet! Here girl!” I yelled, and started running towards the exit. Bullet intercepted me on the way, and I swung myself onto her with more raw power than gracefulness, and we rode out to see one of Tattletale’s drones waiting.

It zoomed off, and I followed.

* * *

It led me around the complex, down the streets through midday traffic. As Bullet sped through the streets, causing cars to swerve and pedestrians to jump aside, I drew a knife and jammed it though her outer layers, allowing me to jam a finger in and take control.

I didn’t clamp down like I did with Night; but instead spend a second or two getting into the flow. My other hand went to my belt and got my cell out, hitting speed dial.

“He’s going to exit into the storm drains over by Washington ave. There’s a black van waiting.”

I went over my mental city map which Victor must have pilfered from taxi drivers and city explorers. “Time?” I asked.

“Ninety seconds at most.”

I pushed Bullet with my power, adding my reaction speed and mass to her maneuvers, single mindedly pursuing the drone that was leading the way; using a van stopping in front of us as a spring-board to get into an alley for a shortcut; using a tree in much the same way to exit the alley and align with the street grid once more.

We tore through the streets at almost twice the speed limit, with her canine clumsiness transformed into cat-like grace, and the storm drain came into view.

The van was beginning to accelerate, and there was a woman in the way, holding a lighter and drawing fire out of it. Circus, the grab-bag pyrokinetic.

Unceremoniously, I drew my SMG, and in perfect sync with Bullet, shot the lighter clean from her hand before racing past her.

The van was accelerating, turning into traffic, and I took aim and shot out the rear tires until my gun clicked empty. The car kept going running on puncture-proof rims of some sort. Spurring Bullet onwards, she leapt and I leapt off her, landing on the roof of the van and plunging a knife into the roof for grip.


	100. 11011

The car swerved, but I adopted a wide, low stance, almost lying down on the roof to compensate.

I pinched my SMG in the back of one knee, detached the magazine and reloaded, before holstering it and drawing my other knife, plunging it into the roof as well.

The driver slammed the brakes, and I went heels over head, barely keeping a grip on my knives as my back struck the windshield. I used the pause before the driver could accelerate again to right myself, still holding on to my knives, but now lying across the windshield.

The driver accelerated and the guy in the passenger seat didn’t draw his handgun, despite being clearly armed, which told me the windshield was bullet resistant. Undeterred, hanging by one hand on a speeding van, I drew my own gun and methodically put into the laminated glass.

There were no such thing as bulletproof anything, and my aim was to weaken.

After the seventh shot, I started fearing the next might penetrate, and holstered my gun. Then I withdrew one of the knives and slammed it down into the weakened laminate glass now spider-webbed so thoroughly by cracks that it was opaque white. The blade went through, and I forced it downwards, tearing the windshield up. Then I drew back and punched my hand through the hole.

This prompted the passenger to draw his gun and put a bullet in my forearm. I didn’t care.

My hand found the steering wheel, and I gripped it. Then I applied the roughly four hundred pounds of lifting power I had in me, and tore the device off its bearings, and out through the damaged glass, discarding it in the wind.

Steering column irreparably damaged, the car would begin to turn, and at this speed tumble, so I wasted no time running up over the roof and jumping to Bullet who was dutifully following pace. I landed awkwardly, but managed to hang on.

“Stop!” I yelled, and Bullet obeyed, just moments before I heard the screeching followed by a rumble as the armored van rolled over.

I climbed onto Bullet and stuck my finger back in the knife wound, taking control. In two short leaps we were upon the car, and I had Bullet tear off the back doors with her claws. Inside, though her eyes I saw Coil securely strapped into a seat. Rather than try to unstrap him, Bullet’s massive paw reached in and tore the seat out of the car, tossing Coil out onto the asphalt.

When he came to a stop, he unbuckled himself and got up.

“I don’t suppose there’s something I could say to you to spare my life?” he said.

“Sure,” I said. “I just wanted you where I could see you, actually.” I jumped down from Bullet. “Let’s talk business. Tell your two mercenaries to stay in the car, or I’ll kill them.”

* * *

The car chase and subsequent crash was already drawing attention.

“Here’s how it’s going to go, Coil,” I said. “This round of bombs will be the last. That means all of what I have left is going to go off, including the bio-weapons. I’ll put you in a coma, you’ll wake only if the bombs do not go off. When you do, I’ll give you adequate funds and a new face. Where you go after that is up to you.”

Coil stood motionless, no doubt gauging his chances.

“Do remember to surrender in the other timeline.”

He looked around at the gathering onlookers.

“After I wake you up, you’ll have to prove to me that you collapsed the other timeline… Let’s say ten coin flips, where getting it wrong earns you a bullet to the head. Then you get your prize as agreed. You have my word.”

I held out my hand. “Take my hand. I’ll administer the coma though your palm. If you try anything funny you’ll find out just how good I am at killing people.”

Coil took it.

From within my palm a spike of bone shot through my glove, though his glove, and into his flesh. My power raced ahead and numbed the sensation even before he knew something was up. Then I put him into a coma, and texted his reply to my servers. Coil collapsed onto my shoulders, and I put him in a fireman’s carry.

All according to plan.

Then I turned to the overturned van where the two mercenaries were extricating themselves.

“Are you two going to be OK?” I asked.

“Uh,” one of them said, looking from me to Coil. “Yeah.”

“Give me his laptop bag,” I said and walked up to them, Coil in tow.

One of the two mercenaries was smart enough to comply promptly and I slung it over one shoulder.

“Get out of here before the cops arrive, I’ll be in touch,” I said. Then I climbed Bullet and rode off.

* * *

Riding back, I estimated we had about five minutes to scram before the heroes showed up; but there was something I had to do. A thought that had been foremost in my mind ever since I came across it in Coil’s head not ten seconds after hitting him with the coma. There was a monster in his basement.

The base itself was a loss now — it would get discovered. I left Bullet by the storm drain, ordering her though our link to go back to Bitch and the others.

I dialled the leader of the mercenary band from Coil’s phone.

“Boss?” A voice came though.

“Not him,” I said. “But I will be taking over all of his assets. I’d like you and your men to stick around and wait to hear from me. Also, I’ll be coming in from the back door.”

I found the secret entrance in the storm drain wall going by Coil’s memories, located the hidden keypad, and punched in the code. The door opened, and I entered into a long hallway. The door closed automatically behind us, and I started jogging down it, thankful that Coil was so scrawny.


	101. 11100

The hallway led to Coil’s office. Deserted. I put him on the floor in the corner.

Following Coil’s mental map of the place, I went directly to the adjacent room where he kept Dinah Alcott and opened the door to find the girl where she was. I was half relived he hadn’t brought her as a hostage.

“Who are you?” she asked.

She was barely twelve, brown haired, and appeared not to have been abused in any way. Her eyes were glassy, and her speech was slurred. I took off my helmet and pulled off my balaclava.

“I’m here to get you back to your mom and dad,” I said. “But you have to be a good girl and stay here a little while longer. OK?”

“Where is Coil?”

“In a coma in the next room. He’ll be dead within the hour.”

She mulled this over for a minute. “Does that mean there’s no more candy?”

I took her hand, and pierced the skin with my bone spike. Her biology exploded into my mind and I identified both the drug — heroin — and a massive Thinker migraine it was covering.

Within seconds I cleared both from her system.

“What—” she said. “What did you just do?”

I didn’t explain. “You need to stay here, it’s not safe.”

She nodded.

“Can you answer me a few questions? I’ll make the pain go away again.”

She nodded again.

“I’m going to go to the sick girl in the vault and use my power on her. What is the chance I can save her? Make her human again? No decimals.”

“Sixteen percent.”

“And the chance I can kill her with my power?”

“Ninety five percent.”

“Thank you. I’ll be back,” I said, and went back into Coil’s office.

Here, I went to Coil’s computer and tore it open, unplugging the hard drive, and pulling the entire tray it sat in off its frame — no time for screws.

* * *

Outside Coil’s office, in the partially constructed main space of his base, I was met with his mercenaries and their guns quickly turning to me.

“Coil has lost,” I said. “He’ll be dead within the hour. Put your guns down. Captain Martinez!”

One of the soldiers reacted, a Latino man.

“We spoke on the phone a minute ago. I’m willing to give you as much as a 10% wage increase if you will work for me. If not, I’ll make sure you get your last pay-day.”

There was some muttering among the soldiers.

“But right now you should all get out of here. The authorities are incoming. Probably the entire roster of Protectorate heroes.”

That got them moving.

* * *

Once the hall was empty, I went up to the ‘vault’ — not that the actual vault door had been installed yet. In it’s place was a gate of not half the structural integrity; unable to contain the monster inside. Not to mention the walls were only partially constructed too.

I went up to it and punched in the code, unlocking it. Then I pulled the massive door open.

“Who are you?” A feminine voice said from within, in the relative darkness.

“A powerful biological manipulator. Coil hired me to fix you,” I said and stepped inside.

Here I beheld the grotesque mass of flesh that was Noelle — stubby legs and an enormous maw, and like a grotesque ‘taur’ the girl’s upper body was perched on top. She might have cleaned up well, save for the whole disfigurement thing.

Just from what Coil knew of her power, I knew she was too dangerous to let live. If she ever got free, went on a rampage, she might wipe Brockton Bay off the map. Especially if capes fought her.

“Where is Coil?” she asked.

“He is preparing to evacuate the base, which is why I am here to fix you up.”

I removed my glove and elbow protector and rolled up my sleeve. Then I drew my knife and let my power pull my elbow joint apart. Putting the knife at the joint, ready to amputate it at a moments notice, I peeled the skin back from my fingertips and made contact with her flesh.

Immediately, an unseen force pulled at my hand, and I felt my power reach out into her entire corpus, taking a noticeable delay to do so.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Then I liquefied her.

A deluge of sterile slime washed over me, almost knocking me over.


	102. 11101

Dinah on my arm, Coil over one shoulder, I walked briskly through the empty base, as orange warning lights flashed overhead. I reached the main entrance, and found it open. Tattletale was waiting for me there.

“We have to go,” I said. “I’ve activated the self-destruction sequence.”

She nodded. I sat Dinah down, handed off Coil to Brian and strode over to the Travelers.

“Where’s Genesis?” I asked.

Right as I had said that, at the entrance of the garage, another monster appeared. Many-legged, and with a bulbous main body. The main body folded open like a flower, and tentacles deposited a wheelchair with a sleeping girl in it. Then the monster started dissolving.

I looked back at Trickster. He looked at me, and pointed at the girl.

“Yeah, I figured,” I said. “We need to get out of here, the self destruct sequence—”

Trickster startled, and began to rise, but I put a hand on his shoulder.

“Noelle is dead,” I said.

He looked at me like I’d grown an extra head.

“Coil killed her — there was a tinkertech bomb in the vault. He thought she was too dangerous to let live.”

I saw the violent impulse in his eyes before he was even aware of it, and my stun gun met his abdomen.

* * *

The soldiers had taken most of the untraceable cars. Tattletale had wisely decided to let them go. Sundancer’s sternum was fractured, Ballistic was concussed, and Trickster was again unconscious.

I put all three of them to sleep, and we strapped them onto dogs. Genesis got to ride with me on Bullet, Dinah rode with Tattletale. Her wheelchair was thankfully very portable.

It turned out I was able to revive the two dogs Newt had tagged. It was a complex toxin, bordering on nanotechnology, and it took me several seconds per dog. I added ‘scan Newt’ to my to-do list.

I came up to Faultline. “I trust you have your own means of leaving the scene?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“I’ll contact you with a business proposal within a few days. I’m taking over Coil’s assets, and I could use someone like you. I can offer services nobody else can.”

“We’ll consider it,” she said.

* * *

Much like the bank robbery, we rode the dogs to safety through the streets, leaving them bathed in darkness. Our destination was nothing as prestigious as one of Coil’s spare bases, we were going to lie low in our territory for a while.

There was a tiredness in the core of my being that had no actual physiological grounding. Genesis didn’t say a word to me for the entire .

We stopped in our own territory, with Grue flooding the streets to give us cover, and I led us to the apartment building. It would serve as a temporary base for today, until we could take over Coil’s auxiliary bases.

We hauled the three Travelers inside on makeshift stretchers, and put the dogs wherever they fit to let the shed their enormous forms. Every time they did, it left behind a substantial amount of flesh, and I had been mulling over it’s applications ever since I saw it happen the first time — Rachel’s power essentially created biomass. There had to be some avenue of synergy with my power there.

There was still twenty minutes left, and Brian stuffed Coil in a closet.

We ended up with a division of labor where Grue too care of Dinah, Tattletale began working with Coil’s laptop, phone, and hard drive, Regent took watch, Bitch tended to her dogs, and I went to tend to our captives.

The building wasn’t handicap-enabled, so I carried Genesis with me up the stairs to the three nicest apartments in the building where we had put Sundancer, Ballistic and Trickster each in their own. She’d squirmed a little at the fact that I was covered in dry protein gloop. I didn’t care.

We tended to Ballistic first — broken sternums could wait.

The apartments were all little two-rooms-a-kitchen-and-a-bath things, and Grue and I had put them all on the floors in recovery positions. I Bent down and removed my gloves.

“What did you do to them?” Genesis asked tentatively.

“He took a kick to the head — probably concussed,” I said. “Sundancer has a fractured sternum.”

“I meant—” she began.

“I know what you meant,” I interrupted. I scratched the scab off the cut I had used to put him to sleep. “I am a biological manipulator. I can heal and harm if I have blood contact,” I said.

“Oh,” Genesis said.

“I put your friends to sleep.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nodding.

“That’s also how I killed your monster,” I added.

Her eyes widened.

Concussions weren’t that tricky — mostly it involved stitching together a whole lot of ruptured cell-membranes, then clearing out accumulated lactic acids. It only took me ten minutes to undo all the damage my kick had done to the poor man’s brain.

We went to Sundancer, and I spent considerably longer on her.

“I thought you said she only had a fractured sternum?” Genesis asked me.

I nodded. “A lot more damage than a few thousand ruptured neurons,” I said. “All I can do is set the bone and glue it together. She’ll have to watch herself for a week or so while it scars and remodels.”

When I was done, we went out into the hallway, but we didn’t go to see Trickster.

“What about Trickster?” Genesis asked.

“He’s mostly unhurt,” I said. “Call Oliver, tell him to come here.”


	103. 11110

The dogs shrank while we waited, and Bitch took watch. Regent went on a supply run, primarily for our civilian clothes, food and basic amenities. There was still water and electricity in the building, so at least we had the opportunity to bathe.

The time ran out on on Coil, and my bombs deactivated, discretely informing me by text.

I opted to change into a clean set of battle fatigues I had stored in the basement, and wash my face. I did it in Genesis’ company to deliberately let her believe she was seeing my real face, much as I had hers.

“I’m going to give you a head-start on something,” I told Genesis. We were in one of the less nice apartments. The faucet was leaking, and the walls yellowed with nicotine.

She was afraid of me, and hiding it well. But I’d be worried if she wasn’t. I was a chiseled amazon killing machine — all the more evident without a shirt on — with perfect hair, and she was an average-sized white girl in a wheelchair with a mop of poorly-cut brown hair.

“I know everything Coil knew,” I said. “What he offered you in exchange for working with him. I know about Noelle.”

Genesis nodded.

“He had no intention of actually following through on his promises.”

She was less phased about this than I’d expected, and I began rooting through the memories of the other Travelers, to uncover their social dynamics. The answer jumped out at me.

“It was Trickster’s idea; you’re losing faith in him,” I said.

“Noelle is dead, so does it matter?”

I shrugged. “I killed her, same as I did to your your monster, so you tell me.”

Genesis looked up at me, startled. “I thought you said a tinker explosive—”

“I lied. Coil knew she was a potential S-class threat. It will be a cold day in hell before I let something like that sleep in Brockton Bay.”

Genesis sighed. “I’m tempted to say ‘good call.’ That was the gloop you were covered in?”

“Yeah, that was a liberal coating of Noelle. Considering your Simurgh exposure, it was about damn time,” I added.

Genesis winced.

I turned off the water and leaned on the kitchen counter. “Sorry, that was harsh.”

Genesis looked away. I pulled on the clean jacket.

“I’m sorry about her,” I said. “There was only a sixteen percent chance I could save her. Noelle deserved better. For what it’s worth, I know she liked you a lot.”

Genesis didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, the good news is you can work for me, now.”

“How is that good news?” she muttered.

“First of all, there’s even odds you’ll get to walk again if I heal you. Second, I’m a lot smarter than Coil, and third, I’m not half the creepy power-hungry douche nozzle he was.”

“Reassuring,” she replied skeptically.

* * *

Dressed in clean fatigues and with a red scarf to cover my face, I greeted Oliver. Oliver was an attractive young man. Well dressed, good posture, nice features. I had expected so much from the memories of the others, but seeing him in person was different.

“You’re Para Bellum?” he asked.

“The very same,” I said. “Your friends are safe — Genesis is awake, but I need to catch you up on some things. How much did Genesis tell you on the phone?”

Oliver shook his head.

“You work for me now. I’m taking over all of Coil’s assets, and your team is one of the biggest. Noelle is dead. Sundancer, Trickster and Ballistic are in my custody, asleep, but otherwise unharmed. You’re going to help me convincing them to stay on board.”

* * *

We woke up Sundancer first. She came to to see me, Oliver and Genesis in the room with her. Of course, this put me at a disadvantage, numerically; but I had seen to being well armed.

“Hello, Sundancer,” I said. “How do you feel?”

She pushed her self to her elbows, then winced.

“I’ve put your sternum back together, but there will be some pain while it heals naturally, and it will be frail, so refrain from strenuous activity for the next week. If I may?”

I slid an arm under her shoulders and pulled her up to standing. I’d deliberately left her in a dazed state, as her power depended on concentration. It also left her more open to manipulation.

“What happened? Where am I?” she asked.

“You lost, I took your team captive, I healed your injuries.”

Sundancer looked to Genesis and Oliver for confirmation.

“Essentially, I am offering you all a job, now that Coil is out of the picture. My team is taking over Coil’s assets, and I need some more manpower.”

Genesis and Oliver hadn’t verbally agreed, but if my model of them based on their team-mates was correct, and neither of them had micro-expression suppression of some form, they were going to say yes.

“One of our guys is out getting some food, if you are hungry. Feel free to discuss with the others.”


	104. 11111

While Sundancer was easily swayed by seeing her two friends, Ballistic would be easier to convince alone.

I hadn’t actually told Sundancer that I’d been the one to kill Noelle, but I was sure Genesis would share that fact with her and Oliver in my absence.

I stripped him of all projectiles, emptying all his costume’s pockets; going by his own memories to find the hidden ones. Chucked all his flechettes and ball bearings into the garbage chute. Once that was done, I drew my pistol, and woke him up.

He came to with a start and sat up. Then he saw me, and his hand went to his ammunition pockets.

“Ah-ah,” I said and wagged my pistol back and forth. “No shooting me in the thigh this time. How do you feel? Any nausea? Headaches?”

It took him a second to put what I was saying together. “Uh… Not really, no.”

“You were badly concussed — sorry about kicking you so hard. Good thing is, I’m actually a healer, so you won’t end up losing a few IQ points over it. Here’s the short version of events which you missed: Noelle is dead. I killed her with my power when I couldn’t save her.”

Ballistic took a moment to look straight ahead, then said. “Just like that… Huh.”

“Coil is as good as dead,” I continued. “I’m the new Coil. If you want it, you can keep your job. From what I can tell Sundancer, Genesis and Oliver are interested. They’re in the other room, unharmed.”

Ballistic got to his feet. “Got any water?”

I pointed to the kitchen. He walked with a slight limp — I’d hit him on the leg with my baton in the fight, and pointedly not healed it. Payback, of sorts.

He removed a section of his helmet and drank long and deep from his cupped hands under the faucet.

“I’m in,” he said.

* * *

Trickster was going to be the trickiest. No pun intended.

He had been in love with Noelle, so I would have to hit him with something.

There was an idea brewing in the back of my head, now, after I had been in contact with Noelle’s physiology, and found myself capable of controlling something as massive as her. Actually I should have caught on when I found I could manipulate the dogs.

I covered up the windows, made sure he was unarmed, and woke him up with my stun gun in hand.

He seemed to lie and blink a few times, remembering or possibly coming to terms with what had happened.

“Noelle,” he said and his eyes fell on me. His mask let me read a partial expression off his face, and I saw him make the decision to hit me. He rolled over halfway and swung at me.

I zapped him. “Stop that and listen to me you fucking idiot,” I said.

He calmed down somewhat, anger subdued by sudden pain.

“Yeah, she’s dead—” I said.

“It’s your fault,” he said, on the edge of tears. “If you hand’t—”

I scoffed. “If I hadn’t taken on Coil? He tried to frame my friends and have the Empire kill us for him. He kidnapped a little girl and drugged her. You worked for him because of empty promises that you were too blinded by desperation too see for the lies they were.”

His frown deepened.

“I swear, if you try to hit me again, I will zap you,” I said.

“Fuck you,” he hissed.

“Look, you have every right to be angry with me: I lied. Noelle wasn’t killed by a bomb. I’m a bio-manipulator. I stuck my hand in her, and when I couldn’t save her, I killed her. She didn’t suffer.”

He looked at me with and expression I could only quantify as incandescent rage, mixed with the kind of look you find on the faces of people about to commit premeditated acts of murder.

“Here’s the good news: I can bring her back. Human-shaped, this time.”

It was a cruel thing to say. I was only reasonably certain I could do something resembling bringing her back; but it got me a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“Conditional on that, will be your working for me. I will not tolerate toxic team dynamics, so this is what you’re going to do.

“For far too long you’ve been living in denial, anger, and bargaining. It has taxed your team; so now you need to work on depression and acceptance. You will go to them, you will apologize, and you will abdicate as team leader.”

* * *

I led Trickster to the room with the other Travelers.

“Now that you are all together,” I said, “let me give you a cordial warning. If you try anything funny, I will shoot to kill. Come to me and say you want to leave, and you will be free to go. Say you will work for and with me, and you shall enjoy my protection and resources. I will leave you to catch up, talk things through, and mourn.”

Then I closed the door and left to take care of the never-ending list of other problems I had to deal with.

* * *

In another empty apartment, I spread out a plastic tarp on the floor, and undressed — not wanting to sully my clothes. In my underwear — sports bra and compression shorts — I pulled Coil out of the closet, and stabbed him with my bone spike. Taking control of his muscles, I made him kneel on the plastic and started the process that would wake him.

He came to, and oriented himself with a start.

I held up a coin for him to see and picked up my pistol from the counter.

“Adequate funds, a new face, you go wherever you want,” I said. “Call it.”

“Heads.” I flipped. Heads. “Again.” “Tails.” Flip. Tails. “Tails.” Flip. “Tails.” Flip. “Heads.” “Tails.” “Heads.” “Heads.” “Tails.” “Heads.” “Heads.”

I threw the coin on the floor. “Funeral expenses, gunshot to the head, burial site of your choice,” I said. “Last words?”

He laughed for a few seconds. Then fell silent. After about a minute he said: “Fuck.”

I shot him in the head. He slumped sideways instantly. Then to be sure, I shot him twice more.


	105. A♠

Tattletale had made herself a makeshift office in the basement. From here she was directing the battle that was taking over Coil’s assets.

Coil was a rich man. Now that I had first-hand experience with how he used his powers, it was all too easy to imagine how he used it to trade stock — having an undo-button. Untraceable to the teams of Thinkers the PRT employed to find things like that.

Tattletale had been spying on Coil for the entirety of her employment. She already knew a lot of what there was to know.

“Good,” she said, seeing me come it. “Although, now it is a race against time to grab what we can before they figure out Coil is dead. I’ll need all his passwords.”

She handed me a laptop upon which was open a darknet browser with several tabs open, each with a login prompt. I loaded up Coil’s motor memory and began logging in.

“Do you think we can get Dinah to work for us?” Tattletale asked. “I could use someone like her.”

“Maybe,” I said, and finished the last login, handing the computer back to her. “Hand.”

She held out her hand, and I pierced her skin with the bone-spike in my palm and cleared up her beginning migraine. “We should also do something about that date,” I said.

Tattletale snickered. “Just as soon as we have more money than god, and a permanent base of operations, thanks.”

* * *

Alec returned with takeout — pizza, mostly — and I took five of them to the Travelers. Oliver met me at the door to their apartment.

“Everything copacetic?” I asked.

He turned his head, not understanding.

“Everything OK?”

“Yeah,” he said.

I nodded. “Good. Thinking on taking me up on my offer?”

His expression betrayed that they were.

“We’re still discussing it, to be honest.”

I gave him a thumbs-up and went downstairs to one of the more furnished apartments.

* * *

Dinah had dozed off on a bedroll with one of Brian’s sweaters as a pillow and his jacket for a blanket.

Brian was sitting, unmasked, up against a wall, reading something on his smartphone. I pulled down my red scarf.

“Did we make the news?” I asked quietly.

“Nothing yet,” he said.

I looked over at the sleeping girl. “How is she?”

“Tired. Scared.”

I had been about her age when my mom had died. I filed that idle thought away for later.

“How did you get her to sleep?”

“She trusts you — you came and saved her, looking like some sort of patriot hero. She didn’t believe you were a villain.”

I smiled.

“Well, our track record isn’t so good,” I said. “I’ll wake her up.”

* * *

Dinah was fairly easy to wake.

“Oh,” she said, when she saw me. “You.”

“How do you feel?”

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Fine, I guess.”

“Dinah, I’d like you to meet someone, would you care to follow me into the basement?”

She looked at me. “Who?”

“One of my friends. She helped taking down Coil.”

Dinah nodded. “Sure. Would it be possible for us to call my parents?”

“Of course,” I said. “In fact, if you want to, I can drop you off with them by nightfall. We just need to get things under control again. You have my word.”

Dinah mulled it over a little. If I guessed right, she was asking her power if I was going to get her home.

“I’d like that.”


	106. 2♠

The floors were cold, so I carried her down into the basement on one arm, holding two pizza boxes in my other hand.

“You have a very powerful gift, Dinah,” I said. “But it’s not good for defending yourself.”

“I know,” she said, grimly.

“If you’d like, I think I could take it away from you.”

It was a possibility I had been considering for some time — in essence, all interaction with one’s power was through the Corona Pollentia and the Gemma. With the right psychological and neurological blocks, it should be theoretically possible to lock away access to the power.

If nothing else, lobotomy was well within my powers.

She looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Do you know Panacea?”

“The healer? From New Wave?”

I nodded. “My power is a lot of things, but it is also a healing power. If you want me to, I can use my power to make sure you never have to worry about it again.”

“But— what if someone kidnaps me again, and then I can’t see the numbers? They would kill me,” she said.

I nodded. “I’ve thought of that. I’m going to make my true powers known to the world very soon. Then I’ll say I took your powers away, and if anyone is stupid enough to try to kidnap you regardless, I’ll kill them.”

“Like you did to Coil?”

“Like I did to Coil.”

She was silent while we descended the last flight of stairs. “I’ll have to think about it,” she said.

* * *

We joined Tattletale in the basement.

“Dinah, this is Tattletale. She’s very smart, and has a power to do with information-gathering,” I said.

Tattletale looked up and waved briefly, before returning to typing. She was wearing a telephone headset now.

“What is she so busy with?” Dinah asked.

“Stealing all that Coil owned,” I answered. “Would you like to help?”

Dinah shook her head. “I’m getting a headache, and I don’t—”

“No candy, I promise,” I said. I sat her down on a box, put one of the pizza boxes in her lap, and rummaged though one of my supply crates, found a pair of socks and threw it to her. “See, Tattletale gets headaches too.”

“Like nails jammed up my nose,” Tattletale added, “and a vise around my head.”

“But I can use my healing power to make sure it goes away,” I said. “She can go on for hours now; before she could only use her powers for ten minutes a day.”

Dinah’s eyes widened when she realised the implications.

“You can do what, five questions per day?” I asked.

“More if it’s to less precision,” Tattletale interjected. “Coil was an idiot to give her such precise queries — six decimals on a percentage?”

Dinah nodded.

“Give me your hand,” I said.

* * *

Clearing up her pain also let me work on other things: undoing the remnants of her opiate dependence, and setting to work on her malnourishment. First of all by tweaking her appetite. She went at the pepperoni pizza like it was the first food she had seen in months.

On a whim, I began supplementing her deficiencies with vitamins and trace elements from my own blood stream — I after all a one hundred and forty pound beacon of health, and Dinah was a stick-thin little girl. I had stuff to spare.

Tattletale asked her questions from time to time, and I kept her pain free.

“Dinah, I have a question,” I said.

She looked at me, genuinely smiling.

“Every time I heal people, I get a snapshot of their body and brain — contained in that is all the information of what makes this person be themselves. Normally I use this to copy their skills and talents, but I was thinking if more was possible.

“The big dog monsters we rode in on shed their forms and become regular dogs after a while. It leaves behind a lot of meat. All of this biomass, I can use to build a big biological factory that can produce medicine, chemicals, explosives, you name it.”

Dinah nodded along.

The plans for the necessary mass of flesh had already solidified in my mind — it had begun disjointedly after I tagged Leet, but it had all been internal devices for myself. Thinking of it occurring outside my body had made it all jump together.

“I was thinking of using it to bring people back from the dead. What’s the chance I can bring Noelle back as a human girl, with her sanity intact, and a new power?”

Dinah thought about it a little. “That’s a little vague — there’s a lot of parameters. I’d say one sigma for. At least.”

I’d taught her the so called ‘65-95-99.7’ progression of bell-curve populations and standard deviations. It limited her to a much coarse scale, which meant easier answers for her. Steadily, I was also feeding her a Harvard don’s knowledge of statistics.

One sigma for was seven out of ten. Not promising.

“Every time I heal someone with powers, my own powers get a little bit stronger,” I said. “What is the chance I can bring Noelle back if I use my power on…” I went over my list of capes with biology-adjacent powers I hadn’t tagged yet. “Panacea and Genesis.”

“That helps — it’ll be a lot closer to two sigma then.”

“Do you know Faultline’s crew?” I asked her. She shook her head. I reached for a laptop and navigated to their wiki page, finding the picture of Labyrinth.

“This is Labyrinth. She is particularly powerful. What if I tagged her too?”

Dinah mulled it over for a moment. “That brings it over two sigma.”

Ninety-five percent.


	107. 3♠

“Let’s go call your parents,” I said to Dinah, after about an hour of her going through almost an entire pizza and flexing her newfound pain-free oracular abilities.

She nodded, and I picked her up.

“Do you have to carry me around?” she asked.

“You said the floor was cold, and I don’t mind,” I said. Then I turned to Tattletale: “Do you have that dossier on Thomas Calvert?”

She handed me a folder without looking away from her computer, and I headed upstairs.

“Are you really a villain?” Dinah asked me.

“Not a very good one,” I said. “We can’t seem to steal anybody except other villains these days.”

Dinah raised an eyebrow.

“Did you know, I’ve only been a villain for about a month, but I’ve put four villains behind bars, and killed four more? That’s better than Armsmaster.”

Dinah giggled a little.

I continued in a jesting tone. “I think the real reason they won’t let me join the hero-club is because I’d be too good. If I’m a villain, they can fight me and I’ll have to run away because I’m so bad at being a villain — I can’t even fight the heroes right!”

* * *

I gave Dinah one of my burner phones, and she dialled one of her parents.

“Mom! It’s me! I’m OK!” was the first thing she almost shouted.

“I don’t know, somewhere in the— Docks I think?” She looked at me and I nodded.

“It was a villain named Coil. He’s dead now… A really cool girl came and saved me… Her name is Para Bellum, she’s with a group called —” she looked at me.

“The Undersiders,” I supplied.

“— The Undersiders. She says I’ll be home by tonight… The numbers say so.” She listened a little more, and then held the phone to her chest. “How are you going to get me home?”

“I’ll call up Armsmaster and see if he can come pick you up,” I said. “He’s the one who helped me with the villains I captured.”

“She says she can get in touch with Armsmaster,” Dinah told her mom. “OK, I’ll call you back.”

She hung up. “Can I keep the phone?”

“Sure,” I said, “let me just have it for a moment.”

She handed it to me, and I wiped it clean of prints, then handed it back to her with my sleeve. Then I took out another phone and dialled Armsmaster.

“Armsmaster speaking,” he said in his usual gruff voice.

“Guess who,” I said.

He sighed. “Para Bellum. Let me guess, something to do with the building collapse?”

“I have Dinah Alcott. She needs a ride home. And Coil is dead,” I said.

“Where would you like to facilitate the transfer?” Armsmaster asked.

“What,” I said, sounding offended, “you think she’s some kind of hostage? Here, you can speak to her.”

“No need, you’ve been given a Stranger-rating. For all I know, you’d just be mimicking her voice,” he said.

“Fair. Anyway, how about a nice public place like the boardwalk?”

* * *

I checked in on the Travelers.

“We’re prepared to accept your offer,” Ballistic said, having been appointed the new leader. I had quietly hoped for someone like Genesis, but she probably hadn’t the temperament for it.

“Good,” I said, then I turned and yelled: “Grue!”

Thirty seconds later, he came up the stairs, wearing his helmet and billowing black smoke.

“Make sure the Travelers get some street clothes, spending money and burner phones,” I said.

“You can’t do that?” he asked.

“I have to go drop off Dinah.”

* * *

I changed into civilian clothes, darkened my complexion further, added freckles, tied my hair up, altered my facial features; Dinah and I hailed a cab to the Boardwalk.

She was still wearing the white, almost hospital-gown-like dress. At least she had been able to fit one of Lisa’s jackets well enough, and I had a pair of boots which were almost laughably too large for her. I was wearing a grey hoodie and jeans — nondescript.

We didn’t speak, Dinah just held my hand the whole way.


	108. 4♠

The cab set us off in a nice spot in the middle part of the boardwalk with view of the beach. I paid him in cash.

“Now,” I said to Dinah. “I’m going to go, but I’ll be nearby.” I had a small revolver in my pocket and a knife in my bra. “If anyone tries anything, they’ll have to answer to me,” I said.

“The numbers say that won’t be necessary,” Dinah said. Then she took out the burner phone and dialled Armsmaster’s number.

I sat down on a bench across the street, took a bottle in a brown paper bag out of my sweatshirt’s front pocket, and pretended to nod off. The street was reasonably busy, so it was a good cover. It took seven minutes for a dispatch to arrive. I heard Armsmaster’s motorcycle before the police cruiser.

Dinah waved at him. Armsmaster stopped, and said something to her. She nodded in response. Armsmaster scanned the surroundings, but didn’t spot me. Said something more to her. She shook her head. A police cruiser pulled up — Armsmaster as an escort. I almost snickered.

They drove off, and I left at a brisk pace. On the way, I lightened my skin, handed my bottle to a homeless man, then took off my sweatshirt and gave that away too. He was about to say something, but I just walked off.

Taking out a burner phone, I called Armsmaster.

“Armsmaster. Para Bellum?”

“Drunk girl, grey hoodie across the street. You missed me. See to it that Dinah gets home safely. I’d be most displeased if I have to storm another supervillain fort to save her.”

He hung up. I ditched the burner phone in a trashcan.

* * *

Tattletale was still working when I came back to the base.

“Which of my bombs have been found?” I asked.

She rubbed her forehead. I held out a hand, she took it, and I administered the migraine cure. Then she handed me a map and circled six places in town. “PRT bomb squads at all those locations.”

“I need transportation,” I muttered.

“Steal a bike,” she said immediately.

I paused, wondering why I hadn’t thought of that before.

“Find somewhere to dump Coil where he will be found,” I said. “And make sure the PRT director gets that dossier about Thomas Calvert.”

Tattletale scoffed. I realized she would have already thought of it. “Sorry,” I said. “Don’t overwork yourself.”

* * *

It was a long path around town to collect my bombs. PRT were working on only about a third, and unfortunately they had found one of the bio-weapons. I had labeled it as such, and it would be very easy to disarm, but it would tip them off to just how dangerous I was.

That would have to be remedied as well. Moderated somehow. So many problems.

It must have aroused some suspicion that a lone woman was riding quickly through town on a bike with a duffel bag at day’s end. I hoped it wasn’t enough that anyone would notice a pattern.

In the end I had nine of my pipe bombs back, and six containers of deadly disease. I threw the circuit boards in a passing garbage truck. The virus canisters warranted sterilizing heat, which I didn’t have handy.

The urgent need to dispose of them led me to break into a workshop and borrow a blowtorch.

* * *

I came home to find Dad sitting with the TV on, flicking between channels. I’d snuck in, lifting the door so as to not make a sound, avoiding noisy floorboards.

“Hey,” I said.

“Taylor!” He jumped a little. “I didn’t hear you come in? Why didn’t you call?”

It was very late, and I kicked myself a little. I’d been so much ‘in the zone’ that I had at every opportunity found a reason to delay.

“Would you believe I forgot?” I said. I hadn’t forgotten at all. I smiled sheepishly to sell the polite fiction.

“Just—” he said. “There’s been big things in the news. Footage of— of you chasing down a car and making it crash, then a building collapsed…”

“Coil is dead,” I said. “The man behind it all. They are going to find his body sometime tomorrow. It’s over.”

Dad picked up on my tone as part of me had intended. Another part of me was just so very tired and overwhelmed. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but for all my brain was better built, there was still such a thing as having to absorb the events of the last few days.

He came up to me. “If there’s anything you want to talk about—”

I pulled him into a hug.


	109. 5♠

Monday morning came and I woke up in my own bed, to a text from Lisa sent sometime around two AM:

> 
>         The king is dead. Long live the king.
>       

We were rich, and the migration of ownership of Coil’s assets had gone smoothly. I got up, showered, put on one of my nicer outfits, and went to cook breakfast for Dad and I.

I turned on the TV for the ambiance, just as the morning news came on.

“… Who went missing a few weeks ago have been returned safely to her parents. Reportedly, the enigmatic supervillain Coil was behind her capture, and according to the Alcotts, the notorious Para Bellum is behind her rescue. The PRT is still investigating the building collapse in downtown, and refuses to speculate on the magnitude of the conflict between Coil’s organization and the gang known as the Undersiders…”

* * *

Coming back to school after the previous week would have felt surreal in another life. Now it felt perfectly ordinary. Dad had sold the administration on me having been stabbed in trying to defend a friend from an Empire thug. I went with a bandage taped over a facsimile of such.

No fictitious extended hospital stay, just a routine operation, stitches and prescribed bed rest.

Emma was quick to find me at the school gates.

“Taylor!” she said. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried!”

I hiked up my blouse to show the bandage. “I went and got myself in trouble. Got stabbed. Nothing serious, but I had to say home for days.”

Emma’s eyes widened. “Shit— you should have told me, I could have kept you company… Maybe I can give you my notes; you’ve missed a whole week—”

“Emma, it’s fine,” I said. “Thanks for caring.”

We walked to class together.

* * *

School was mindless enough that I could spend the time actually coming to terms with what I had done on a moral level.

I had killed Coil, despite being emotionally centered and him not posing any immediate threat.

Night had been in the process of killing me, Victor had been well on his way, and Othala had refused to save my life under torture — not my proudest moment by a long shot.

Coil had been bound, captured, his power thoroughly disabled. I could have altered his face, probably locked away his power somehow, given him money, and sent him off. Instead I had given in to good old-fashioned revenge, and if not for being a capricious word-twisting wish-granting genie, gone back on my word.

Today would warrant some blogging. More and more it seemed I was becoming the PR department of the Undersiders.

To my delight, I found out that Madison had all but forgotten about me — she had never been a central actor in the bullying campaign, and so defaulted to not doing anything. In this instance I had no desire for revenge.

I kept my feelers out for whether she was giving anyone else a hard time. In fact I spent a significant part of the lunch break just trying to spot signs of bullying.

* * *

Emma followed me out when school let out.

“I’m not taking the bus,” I said. “I’m walking.”

She shrugged and kept pace with me. “What happened?”

“Hm?” I already knew she was intent on prying some information out of me.

“I heard you ran off that day, before they locked down the school,” she said.

I looked at her, and she was curious, with a hint of genuine concern. “One of my friends got in trouble — he’s black. I had to go help him.”

“And you got stabbed by a Nazi?”

I nodded. “A mugger. I tried to talk him out of it, he wouldn’t have it. Ran off after he did and my friend got me to the emergency room.”

We walked in silence, and I started making up auxiliary details. If she pried further I’d say I didn’t want to talk about it; but for now it was nice to have her care about me.

“Are you a cape?” she said quietly.

My thoughts stumbled and caught themselves — of course she would try for that in the hope of returning to the comfort of familiarity.

“I’m not Sophia,” I said.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she shot back.

It had plainly been too long since I had gauged Emma. She was astute and savvy — something she had long leveraged against me before I got my powers and effectively stopped caring. Thinking the thought to end in a fraction of a second I said: “No, I am not a cape, Emma.”

She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t believe you, but let’s pretend I do.”

I’d have face-palmed if it wasn’t a dead giveaway. I had a mental model of Emma, but apparently something had changed in the last week — possibly therapy?

On the other hand, Emma was trustworthy. At the age of twelve she had held on to Sophia’s secret, and she was clearly not afraid of breaking the law; only of getting caught.


	110. 6♠

“Emma, I want to give you a warning,” I said. I turned down a busier street. More people meant less people to pay attention to what two girls were chit-chatting about.

“Hm?” she said.

A glance at her told me she was ready to receive ‘the dish.’

I took her hand and squeezed it. “You will not like yourself very much if I tell you the truth.”

She got quiet. We walked for a few moments in silence. “OK,” she said.

“I’m a bit of a cape geek, you know?” I said in an up-beat tone. “The thing is that powers manifest in these things called trigger-events. Basically, people get in intensely stressful situations, and their powers spontaneously form. And it’s life-or-death stress, I mean. The kind that leaves people with scars, PTSD. It’s why there’s so many villains. Most capes are broken from the get-go.”

I leaned close to her and whispered: “The locker.”

It took Emma a second to put two and two together. The blood drained visibly from her face. I squeezed her hand. She looked at me with dread in her eyes.

“Now, I don’t know if you heard,” I said in the same chipper tone. “But there’s this new villain in town — she’s been making waves. Started out robbing a bank, got killed by Glory Girl, but came back from the dead and walked out of the morgue.”

Emma nodded.

“Then she reportedly took out three of the Empire’s capes; just yesterday I hear she defeated that mysterious villain Coil. A building collapsed, even,” I continued. “She wears blue and like SWAT-team armor, with stripes on her sleeves.”

I leaned in close. “That’s me.”

“Her name is Para Bellum, I swear the way she’s going at it, I wouldn’t want anyone to be on her bad side — they don’t even know what her powers really are!”

I squeezed her hand. My bone-spike dipped painlessly into her palm.

“Of course, if you’re not as much a fan of villains as I am, we can still be friends.”

* * *

Emma and I parted ways. I went over her snapshot and started updating my model of her. It fairly quickly struck me that there was no way in hell she was going to rat me out. I felt dirty having to take measures like that.

I’d stowed my schoolbooks in my locker. I had money to replace anything in it now, on the off chance somebody thought they could score points with Madison by doing something to it. I almost hoped somebody would — especially someone I could throttle.

Immediately I seized that train of thought and retraced it: not that idle fantasy was something I needed to expunge, but that thought in particular was indicative of that very same systemic issue Tattletale had pointed out.

Filing it away for later, I headed for the apartment building. I was going to have to name that place at some point.

* * *

Tattletale was sleeping. I checked her over with my power, numbing the point where my bone spike touched her. Nixed her building migraine, cleaned up metabolic toxins, and let her sleep.

Then I picked up a laptop and composed my latest PhO thread:

> 
>         Coil, The Snake of Brockton Bay
>     
>     His crimes were as numerous as they were clever. He was a chess-master to rival myself.
>     
>     Dinah Alcott was kidnapped on the day my team robbed Brockton Central. Coil was, unbeknownst
>     to me at the time, our employer in this endeavour, and our action served as the distraction needed to
>     kidnap the girl.
>     
>     Further, Coil kept a particularly horrific Case 53 in his basement --- a poor soul twisted
>     by an uncontrollable power with the potential to cause damage upwards of an Endbringer attack.
>     
>     And then there was the matter of outing the Empire and framing my team for the act, which
>     nearly got me killed.
>     
>     Now he is dead. I am not proud of having killed him. But Dinah Alcott is safe once more,
>     and the monster he held captive is dead.
>     
>     Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
>       

The outstanding issue was what Dinah had said. I needed Genesis and Panacea — in fact I needed more capes in general. More people in general.

The whole bone-spike-numb-perforation trick could serve me well.

I grabbed a phone and began making calls.

* * *

“Who is this?” Genesis said. I knew her real name but it was still a trespass of professionalism.

“You’re new at this aren’t you?” I asked. “Para Bellum speaking. Want me to come by and take a look at your spine?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “Uh… Yeah. Wait, Ballistic wants a word.”

I heard the phone being handed off.

“This is Ballistic, what can I do for you?” he said.

He was very professional-sounding. “We’re ready to pay you for services rendered, but I was hoping to forge a more mutual relationship with your team. Also, I should double-check your concussion. I didn’t tell you directly, but I assume Genesis filled you in on my power?”

“She did.”

There was a hardness in his voice — he didn’t trust us. I’d gone over their memories in passing, and found that negative emotion and trauma saturated most of them.

I sighed. “Good. Look, let’s not make this any more awkward and professional than it needs to be. I’m a friend.”

He didn’t reply — probably thinking of some dismissive retort.

“You’re a teenager with superpowers, and so am I,” I said.


	111. 7♠

Faultline speaking."

I mentally paged through Tattletale’s dossier on Faultline’s crew.

“Para Bellum. How is your team holding up? Is Spitfire OK?”

There was a scoff at the other end. “Your concern isn’t as endearing as you think,” she said.

It was refreshing to talk to a proper genius. “Perhaps it isn’t. You have two Case 53’s on your team, and if your little nemesis has it right, Labyrinth isn’t doing so well either.”

“Nemesis?” Faultline asked me.

“Tattletale. Perhaps she is mistaken in that regard?”

That earned me a laugh. “Maybe, maybe not. Still, she is a Thinker, and I am very much not. I don’t know what that says about her, though. Anyway, what’s your point?”

I cleared my throat. “Joking at my team mate’s expense aside, I have a proposition for you: it is a little known fact which will very soon become public that I am in fact a generalized biological manipulator.”

She was quiet.

“Panacea may be a healer.” I knew she wasn’t. “I work slower, but I can do literally everything. I’d like to take a look at Newt, Gregor, and Labyrinth. Also, I can provide health-checkups for the rest of you — perhaps Spitfire’s nose needs fixing?”

The quiet persisted.

“You have objections.”

“Yes,” she said. “I know enough neurology to know that such a power makes you a Master.”

“And also a Stranger — I can mimic anyone I’ve used my power on almost perfectly. But here’s the thing to consider: I don’t want to be branded a Master. I want to be known as a dependable, consistent, professional — even businesslike — villain,” I said. “No matter how smart I am about mastering myself an army, the truth will get out and I’ll get slapped with an S-class threat and a pending kill order.”

This part of my argument depended on Faultline being smart.

“I’m very, very smart, Faultline. I hope we, as fellow smart people, can see the incentives clearly.”

“We do,” she said.

We agreed on a meeting and I hung up, kissed Lisa’s forehead. She barely stirred.

Then I disguised myself with my power, and headed to Brockton General. I had in a cunning plan.

* * *

Finding the young healer proved easy enough. She was in her white robe with red rims. Same as she usually wore. I caught her in the hallway.

“Panacea?”

“Busy,” she said.

“Can I just shake your hand?” I said.

She turned to me, and I read her. When I had seen her do emergency aid during the gang war, she had been more animated, especially when she healed me. But now, she looked dead bored. I couldn’t blame her: healing people every day had to be a hard job, and without the benefits afforded actual doctors, I doubted she was handling it very well.

She took my hand, and I dipped my bone spike into her palm. “Thank you for saving me a week ago,” I said. Her eyes went wide in recognition and fear. “I’m not here to hurt you. Look inside me — no toxins, no diseases, no nothing.”

“What do you want?” she whispered.

“To let you know I’m a kindred spirit. A biological manipulator. Though nowhere near as powerful as you.” I let go of her hand. “Feel free to hit your panic button now.”

* * *

Making my way out of Brockton General, I turned down an alley, turned my jacket inside out, let my hair down, lightened my skin and reverted the slight swelling of my face, and picked up my bag from under a dumpster.

In my mind a mental image unfolded of Panacea, and I started work on my profile of her. Naturally her first action would be to contact her mother — foster mother — Brandish, Carol Dallon. Naturally this would lead to a modest-scale PRT investigation. All in all my little stunt had better be worth it.

On the other hand, the picture that the neurological data painted in my mind was quite bleak. Panacea — Amy Dallon — was not a well girl. And as I had deduced, her powers were more incredible than mine by far.

A mousy time bomb with brown hair and a white robe. And should she go nuts, I’d be the only one able to stop her in any meaningful sense — disregarding people like Eidolon and maybe Glastic Uaine.

* * *

Faultline’s club was as far as I could tell, not a pristine establishment. Her people seemed competent enough, and upon showing up in costume, I was directed into and through the empty main space and up the stairs to the floors above.

It was amazing how being a known supervillain opened doors. I wasn’t even visibly armed, just a stab vest over a blue shirt with striped sleeves, tights star decal on one knee, a red scarf to cover my face and a light helmet. My utility belt cleverly hid several lethal things.

Among the things in Tattletale’s dossier had been a map of this building, so I already had an idea of escape routes should I need one.

In the second floor hallway, past a sign saying ‘VIP area’ I found Newt. His blue hair couldn’t have clashed more with his orange, scaled skin, but he was athletically built, and apart from the obvious inhumanity, attractive.

His power was touch-induced psychotropic unconsciousness, which I imagined made it difficult for him to use that attractiveness to his advantage.

“Hello,” I said. “Quick experiment: you took out some of our monsters the other day, I was wondering if I could try a dose of your power on myself.”

Newt stopped on his way past me. I held out a hand.

“Handshakes usually put people out for a good ten minutes,” he said.

I shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to make it less — I’m in a hurry. My regeneration against your toxin, c’mon, take my hand.”


	112. 8♠

Giving me a strange look, Newt slapped my open hand rather than grasping it — whereas I had observed his toxic emanations work on the dogs, seeing them act on my own body was an entirely different thing.

It was perhaps in retrospect a tad overconfident of me to have gauged Newt’s power the way I had.

First of all, these little buggers; the individual molecules — were fast. In a fraction of a second, my arm was numb from the elbow down.

Second, in touching Newt, my power had made contact, and I’d been treated to his entire biology. The unexpected information dump sent me reeling for just that fraction of a second I should have used to counteract the toxin.

This in turn gave it time to reach my heart, where it jumped from the right atrium, harmlessly across arterial membranes into my aorta, dashing my hopes of intercepting it before it purposefully made a trip to my brain.

This wasn’t a psychotropic, it was a nano machine weapon. Slippery; tiny. It reached my brain stem before I excised every single molecule of it with my power.

In the process, I had staggered back and up against a wall. I looked at my hand, and muttered: “Damn.” Both to convince Newt his power was at least somewhat effective on me, but also to just note to myself that I had just been handed a holy grail.

Tagging Panacea had removed my primary limitation: the need for blood contact.

“Potent stuff,” I said.

Newt nodded. “Most people go out like a light; you didn’t. Brute power does that?”

“Something like it.”

I turned and headed for Faultline’s office, and my thoughts started enumerating the repercussions of my newest improvement. Notably that I’d now be able to kill on touch; which netted me a Striker 7 classification once the PRT connected the dots.

* * *

“Para Bellum,” Faultline said and rose from her desk. She was in costume; favoring a play on the theme “riot-gear” like myself. The only obvious detriment was that she wasn’t wearing a full helmet, and had an easily-grappable ponytail. Her mask was some sort of dark, featureless plate — probably with Tinkertech transparency.

Her offices was plainly furnished, and from the quality of her computer hardware, most of her work was done electronically.

“Faultline,” I replied and took off my helmet and sat in the appointed chair. “I approve of your taste in costumes.”

She gave an appreciative nod, and I lamented the fact that I couldn’t see her face.

“But let’s discuss business,” I continued, “you have two Case 53’s on your team, and Labyrinth has her own unfortunate circumstances. I’d like to offer my services as a healer and biological manipulator, to be at your disposal to potentially treat your team mates of their afflictions.”

“So you said,” Faultline replied. “What do you want in return?”

“Loyalty.”

She leaned back in her chair. A retreating gesture — unsure, suspicious.

“Also, of course,” I added, “we’ll pay you. And within reason you can call upon myself and Tattletale’s talents to aid in matters concerning your team alone.”

“Of course,” Faultline replied. “I’d have rejected your offer otherwise.”

I leaned forward. “As of eighteen hours ago, the Undersiders became the second-wealthiest gang in Brockton Bay. I’ve been active for a little over a month — I was hoping you’d come along for the rest of the ride.”

Faultline chuckled. “You sound a little too confident, for my tastes—” she said, and I interrupted.

“— which is why I’d like to draw on your expertise and experience in order to make sure I don’t get us all captured or killed. As far as I can tell, you’re one of the best; I’d love to have you as a consultant.”

“I’ll think it over,” Faultline said.

I nodded. “That’s all I can ask.” We shook hands — she was wearing gloves.

“Anything else?”

I shook my head. “Well, I was thinking of visiting your club in civilian dress during business hours; what’s your policy on fake ID’s and drugs?”

That got another chuckle from her. “Officially, we condemn both like the law-abiding citizens we are. Better make sure it’s a good fake and high-quality product.”

* * *

Spitfire was outside the door to Faultline’s office, apparently waiting for me.

Her costume was quite ingenious — her mask was made to look like a gas mask, but was actually more akin to the nozzle of a flamethrower. Her suit was fire-retardant rubber.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“You kneed me in the face and tazed my friend. Faultline can talk to whoever she likes, but I don’t have to like it.”

“Ah,” I said. “Grudge.” Then smugly: “And I bet my team’s failed recruitment attempt compounds the matter. And now we’re hiring you.”

“Fucking great,” Spitfire muttered.

I slid on my helmet. “What did I give you? Concussion? Broken nose? Cheekbone? Take off your glove.”

“What—” she said.

“Your glove. My power needs skin contact to work. Take it off and shake my hand.” I held mine out to her. “I’m discount Panacea — only about one tenth as quick, but I can make sure your face stays pretty and your brain stays fully functional.”

She eyed me. “No shit?”

“Your entire team is within earshot, and you can always douse me in napalm if I try to pull a fast one.”

She looked from my hand to me, then back. “I’m good, thanks.”

No dice on that gambit.


	113. 9♠

Making my way to the motel the Travelers had chosen as their hideout, I took a detour down a busy street.

Weaving in and out between pedestrian traffic, I serendipitously let my hands grace bare skin on as many passersby as I could; relishing in the information overload. In just a few hundred feet, I accumulated more snapshots than I had ever had.

There was one more outstanding issue to look into; another thing buried in Coil’s memories.

Coil didn’t owe his superpower to some traumatic event, that I could tell; my ability to interpret episodic memories was hazy at best. It fit with the fragments of fact I was able to pull from the Travelers’ heads — they hand’t gotten theirs in trigger events either, but it was a close call.

One name stood out: Cauldron.

Coil’s mission had been to attempt to take over Brockton and instate himself some sort of nobility.

I needed Tattletale to look into it.

I paged through his memories best as I could and came across a few outliers. At some point he had spoken to Alexandria in person. About what, I couldn’t say, but the association between the Cauldron facility and Alexandria was quite strong.

* * *

The motel was a ‘cash only’ establishment with a by-month rental plan. It also looked like a monument to the gradual decline of the economy in general and Brockton Bay in particular. Run-down exterior, flaky paint.

Oliver opened the door. He looked different. “And you are?” he asked. I’d changed into civilian clothes — hoodie and jeans.

I handed him the pizza. “Your boss,” I said.

He let me in. The walls in the room were stained with nicotine.

Mentally, I put myself in the minds of the Travelers, and started paging through Ballistic, Trickster, Noelle and Sundancer’s memories. Something which I hadn’t found much opportunity to do.

Eyes turned to me as I stepped in. “Hey,” I said.

Reading the social situation was interesting — body language, positioning. The room was furnished with three beds and a round table. The people in it painted a tableau in tribute to the social power structure.

Luke was the centerpiece, the King. Krouse was the disgraced and defeated villain. Marissa was the Virgin Mary. Oliver was the faithful squire. Jess was the neutral party caught in the middle of this upheaval of their social-structure.

None of them said anything.

“My name is Taylor,” I said. “I already know yours, so let’s skip the introductions.”

“What do you want?” Luke asked.

“Several things,” I said. “Mostly, I want to help you; and in return I want your loyalty.”

With that, I walked up to Genesis and held out a hand. She took it, and I got my first look at what a spinal injury looked like. A fracture of the first lumbar vertebra had lost her the function of her legs — very cleanly making her paraplegic. An old injury. Pinching and laceration of the spinal chord had caused scarring and some nerve death. Her leg musculature had atrophied extensively.

With my power, I established direct connection between the healthy nerve tissue below her L1 and above. Tracking the resulting brain activity, I matched it up correctly on the second try.

“I—” Jess said, drawing breath sharply. “I can feel my legs.” Her heart rate and respiration increased; adrenaline flooded her system, as endorphins did her brain. I smiled.

“I haven’t actually fixed your spine, yet,” I said. “I’m just seeing if everything is in working order.”

Jess looked around at the others, and I spared a glance too. Most of them were surprised — despite the fact that I had fixed Marissa’s sternum and Luke’s concussion. Conclusions not made. Human nature.

With a thought, I cut her L1 and repositioned it correctly — it had mostly healed right on it’s own, but I wanted to make sure. Then I eliminated the scarring on her spinal chord and pillaged what I could of stem cells to make up for the loss. Under my direction the specialization process was almost a hundred times faster.

It took me ten minutes, during which Jess and the others chatted excitedly and with no small amount of awe. She took off her socks and wiggled her toes for the others to see.

“You’re going to be fragile for a few days, I recommend you don’t spend too much time in your chair,” I said. “Your vertebra needs to settle and your legs need to regenerate.” With a thought I activated the systems of receptors governing the regrowth and strengthening that occurred in response to micro fractures and lacerations from exercise. “Eat lots of protein, drink lots of milk. Call me if you experience any discomfort.”

Oliver looked inside the bag of drinks I had brought with, and pulled a gallon of whole milk. “I was wondering what this was for,” he said.

Jess looked at me, elated, smiling wider than I had ever seen her do.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said.

“Don’t,” I said with a smile. “This isn’t charity — it’s more of an investment in a future asset.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marissa said.

“Nothing sinister,” I said and let go of Jess’ hand. “Investments carry risk. If nothing beneficial comes of our collaboration, I’ll mark it up to bad luck.”

My eyes fell on Krouse. He was noticeably less happy than the others. “Krouse,” I said. “I’d like to look at you as well.”

“Why?” he said. “I’m not sick.”

“That you know of,” I retorted. I went to him and held out a hand. He took it.

Clinical depression, I concluded after taking a short look at his neurochemistry. I didn’t say anything aloud that might alert the others — doctor patient confidentiality wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Silently, I pushed mechanisms in his brain to up the production of serotonin. It wouldn’t cause his troubles to go away, but it would let him better deal with his self-loathing. I’d done the same to myself, if more extensively.

“You’ll be fine,” I said and turned towards the last three. “Luke? Your concussion.”

* * *

After looking over Luke — on a fast track to total recovery — Oliver and Marissa — both in excellent health — I grabbed a slice of pizza and a can of soda.

“You should all talk this over. I’ll be in touch.”


	114. 10♠

As I rode the bus back to our temporary base, I started working on a list of powerful parahumans I’d like to shake the hand of:

Labyrinth for her raw power. Aegis, given his power’s closeness to mine. The new ward Browbeat was a biokinetic as well — nobody looked like that in real life. Every Tinker in the city. Miss Militia — just for fun. Manpower.

In actuality, every parahuman in the city would be a boon to my powers.

A text message pinged on my phone:

> 
>         I think we've been made. Spotted disguised PRT agent 
>     scoping out our base. Chatter indicates raid in the making.
>     Relocating at earliest convenience. Any idea why?
>       

I cursed inwardly — this was perhaps a little more proactive of the PRT than I had hoped.

> 
>         stuck up conversation with panacea at Brockton general
>       

The reply came promptly:

> 
>         Clear stuff like that with me in the future, OK?
>     We'll have to lay low for a while now.
>       

I mulled a little on that — the possible chain of events. By all accounts an agency as large as the PRT couldn’t mobilize that fast unless our capture had been given top priority.

And it was policy to gauge the threat-level of capes based on evident — not alleged — ability.

It was a given that Panacea had tattled about out meeting and pieced together that I was like her — a biological manipulator. This would lead to increased scrutiny — further increased scrutiny. We were already making big waves what with taking down Coil and causing a few million dollars of property damage.

But a raid? That required the cooperation of a judge to get a warrant, which required probable cause. Possession of illegal firearms was about the worst thing I could come up with — we were fugitives from justice on paper, of course.

Vagrancy? That wasn’t grounds for a police raid. I was fairly sure Lisa had secured the building legally in a shell corporation somewhere.

All things pointed to somebody cashing in a favor from a judge somewhere. The higher in the hierarchy the likelier.

> 
>         do any top prt execs have personal grudges against us?
>     personal investment in panacea? was hurt by a villain as a kid?
>       

Six minutes later, Lisa replied:

> 
>         Director Emily Piggot was part of the Ellisburg task force.
>       

Ellisburg. Nilbog. The Goblin King. The archetypal example of a bio-cape gone rogue. A city had disappeared overnight. The PRT lost something like six hundred men in that operation.

If the director had been in that, she would have grounds for a healthy skepticism against biological manipulators.

Interesting. I got off the bus, and headed home. Best way to avoid confrontation was not to be there when the enemy advanced. It was a temporary base, and if we could fool our enemies into thinking we were weak and licking our wounds, all the better.

> 
>         i need a secure location to build something big and fleshy. any ideas?
>       

The reply was unsettling:

> 
>         Don't start anything tonight. Go home, come see me in the morning.
>       

* * *

My thoughts were still circling the danger Lisa had implied in that text, when I came home, and my train of thought was promptly jarred in a different direction: Dad.

I hadn’t used my power on him, because so far my power had largely been a weapon; but today I had touched almost a hundred people for their skills alone — and if I wanted, their looks, mannerisms, and empathic models of their preferences and thought patterns.

But the core question was whether I wanted that of my dad. Sure, he had actionable skills — deep knowledge of the docworker’s union, the city’s political climate and so on. But I was already manipulating him a lot, from time to time. Where was the line, ethically speaking?

On the other hand, if someone found me out and killed him to get at me, I’d hate myself for not being able to — if that was indeed within my power — bring him back from the dead.

If nothing else, I was surely acting in his best interests.

I found him in the living room, on the couch, watching TV.

“Hey dad,” I said, and came up behind the couch to give him a hug from behind.

“Hi Taylor, how was your day?”

I pressed my cheek to his, and my power’s awareness spread into him. “Good. Nothing eventful. Have you eaten?”

“A little — but if you’re cooking something, perhaps I can have a bite?” He said with a smile.

As I went into the kitchen I built a new model of him in my mind, and one fact stood out: dad was, to a degree, afraid. Not afraid on my behalf, either. He was afraid of what I was capable of.


	115. J♠

I got up early and went downtown — ‘come see me in the morning,’ to me, meant a breakfast date. Dad would be eating breakfast alone this fair morning.

Lisa met me at the door wearing a T-shirt at least three sizes too big — obviously the one she slept in.

“Sleeping in?” I asked.

“It’s seven in the morning on a Saturday, and some of us aren’t neurochemically superhuman,” she retorted and showed me in.

This was an incrementally nicer place than her safe-houses. Spacious, though still not big, well-lit, and a good view. Probably worth at least a million and a half.

She had taken the effort to have a well-stocked fridge and cupboard. I made bacon, eggs, toast, coffee; nothing fancy, except for the flourishes — chives and sour cream to taste in the scrambled eggs, a touch of paprika on the bacon, and cinnamon toast.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said.

“As you do,” Lisa said, helping herself to the scrambled eggs.

“As I do,” I said. “We need to enumerate the capes I’ve—” I searched for the word.

“Interfaced,” she suggested.

As good as any. “Those I’ve interfaced with. There’s a few obvious ones like Panacea removing my blood-contact limitation.”

“Yeah, Victor and Über are the only ones we know for sure.” She stared at me, chewing a piece of bacon. “Night was the kick-off point. What changed?”

“Could be a second trigger,” I said. Nights power, from what I could reconstruct from the frozen image of the monster etched in my mind, her motor skills, and tactical habits, was to turn into a monster when unseen.

Which implied matter being created and destroyed. Either that violated conservation of mass, or… The source of powers was something I dedicated focused thought to only rarely. Powers had seemingly unlimited energies to work with, and seemingly unlimited computational resources. Which meant… Which meant.

“I need alternate hypotheses on the source of powers,” I said. “Violating conservation of matter and energy and having computational ability ex nihilo doesn’t sit well with me.”

Lisa stared at me for a moment, expression inscrutable.

“I mean,” I began, “Even some of the new physical phenomena discovered from studying Tinker work still obey the same laws as everything else: conservation of energy, the laws of thermodynamics —”

Lisa held up a hand. “That’s not why I’m silent. My power isn’t telling me anything.”

I narrowed my eyes. “As in, you get bad answers, or as in you don’t get answers.”

She nodded. “The latter.”

Trying to divine the source of powers, Lisa’s power was uncooperative. Which meant either it couldn’t — even though it had worked on powers in other ways before; or perhaps Lisa didn’t have the knowledge necessary to comprehend the answer, even though that would be a first — and Lisa was as proficient in physics as I was.

Or, whatever was responsible for powers didn’t want to be found. A defense mechanism?

“Interesting,” I said, just as I remembered a rather crucial detail: Earth Aleph. Multiple universes existed, and travel between them was possible. Given the energies wielded by the likes of Sundancer, it was a safe bet that the source of powers could tunnel though from other worlds. Worlds where they could for all I knew have thousands of tonnes worth of matter lying about, ready to be teleported in whenever a cape ‘created something.’

So if I was right, Night’s apparent matter creation was swapping one body for another in an eye blink; meaning she had a two bodies, one somewhere in the multiverse which her power repaired while the other was in use, or perhaps rebuilt every time she was hurt.

Which tied neatly to the aspect of my power I had first gotten familiar with: everyone I had ever interfaced with hung before my mind’s eye, frozen in time. Snapshots. Alternate bodies, in a way.

“Night lets me store snapshots of people I interface with, true or false?” I asked.

“I’m getting true,” Lisa said.

“Othala gave me some sort of trump ability?” That one was a no-brainer. “Brian’s power has to do with blocking radiation?”

Lisa pondered that for a moment. “Either get Alec to Jinx you, or get one of our back-alley doctors to take a chest X-ray. That should give you more data.”

I pondered the first part — Alec’s power worked outside influence on my body. The ‘upgrades’ I had received were technically things I could do without, only with more effort — the information of skills and training was there in their heads, it was just a matter of sufficiently analyzing the several exabytes worth of data in a single brain.

And the mental snapshots I had of people, I could do without by just having people tied up in a basement somewhere.

They were very valuable upgrades indeed.

“Alec’s power has to do with neurology, largely. I should find a willing test subject,” I said, moving on.

“You have a reference?” Lisa asked.

“Tried controlling Night’s monster form, and Othala. Both were tricky and clumsy. Haven’t done any puppeteering since.”

She nodded and gestured for me to continue.


	116. Q♠

We worked out a number of experiments that I would need to try in order to clarify what aspects of my powers had gotten easier from what cape, and managed to get solid quantitative confirmation on how my powers escalated generally from each contact: roughly linearly.

Interfacing with Rachel had made it easier to deal with dead organic matter, specifically converting available resources into live cells. From Lisa I had gotten a much better grip on converting my snapshots of people into actionable psychological data.

Coil and Dinah’s powers both had done something to the way I could estimate and simulate actual changes, while Leet had given me a greater established catalog of syntheses for my power. Replicating the strange bio-polymers of Night’s monster form would be within reach any day now.

As for the Travelers and Newter; it took me explaining how my power felt in detail, before Tattletale caught on: the nanoscopic tools my power wielded had a fair number of simple manipulations. Moving, mixing, cutting, mending, heating, cooling; basic physics. And it was at this point that she had prompted me to explored the limits of these.

I’d early on established what one nano-hand could do, and never re-examined that fact. Now, they had a much greater range — applied force, heat energy, cutting power; even teleportation and providing emergency structure. I could cauterize tissue, move nutrients and even entire cells with speed and ease. There was also a mode of operation wherein they would deflect radiation, which I took to be evidence of Brian’s power.

It was a very productive breakfast. Which brought us to the first purpose of this meeting.

* * *

“You have a hero complex,” Lisa said, still not properly dressed. “No, scratch that — you have a martyr complex.”

I pursed my lips. Complexes were subtler things than mere neurochemical imbalances; to find them on my own would require auditing my thought processes in general — an arduous endeavor. “Go on,” I said.

“Rushing into battle, confident that any damage you sustain will be manageable, and that you can think your way out of any trouble you might get in.

“Exempla gratia: bank robbery. You decided to sacrifice yourself so that we could elide our pursuers, confident that you could use an untested technique to fool the authorities. Had they brought in Panacea to look you over, the gig would have been up. You would have been captured, forced into a probationary Wards membership…”

I nodded. That had been a poor decision. Too many ways it could have gone wrong.

“Well, maybe it’s not so cleanly cut as a martyr complex. I think your core problem is motivated cognition. No matter how smart you are, there’s no way to avoid it if you don’t want to.”

That… I hadn’t actually considered. “Emotion control. I was overconfident in my ability to feel for what I could use reason to identify as optimal.”

Lisa sipped her latte. “That sounds like a likely source. What kind of headspace were you in when you initially augmented your brain?”

“Lonely,” I said, and recalled those months. “Defiant that with my power, the bullies at my school couldn’t touch me. Defiant indifference. Didn’t even speak to my dad.”

Lisa nodded — not an ounce of judgment. “You joined us on severely shaky ground. Remember why?”

“Stated reason was that I was afraid I’d fuck up the PRT out of spite. Stupid. Inconsistent. I…”

“You wanted friends,” Lisa said. “We were friendly.”

There was no point of self-comforting gestures with the kind of body control I had. “That’s the oldest recruitment trick in the book, and I fell for it. Ow.” Perhaps for Lisa’s benefit, perhaps for my own, I indulged in rubbing my neck.

“Truth hurts. It’s kind of my specialty.”

I shot her a glare. She smiled.

“Then after the bank job,” she continued, “you rested on your laurels and you were severely imprudent in starting your blogging venture. I approve of it, but you should have been more careful. I’m becoming convinced it was the reason why Coil decided to cut us off. You didn’t consider all the trouble you’d land Brian in — I’ve reinstated him at his old quote-unquote job, and his prospects with his sister looks good, but still.”

I had seen real anger on Brian’s face that day. Real hurt. He had soldiered on, but still. Had I not been able to make it come together, that would have been the end of him and me.

“Taylor, I’m not saying any of this to hurt you—”

“— I know,” I said. “You’re still a lousy therapist.”

“And you’re a lousy client,” she retorted. “Anyway. You lack subtlety, on a fundamental level. You are willing to forgo all social fiction, in a way that’s not really conducive to anything other than warfare.”

“It works, sort-of,” I said.

“You’re burning through social capital faster than you can build it with your upstanding, generous nature. Taylor, you are one of the most loyal people I know, and I’m glad to have you as a friend; but people don’t like a robot that runs on game theory and codes of honor. They like that their expectations aren’t violated.”

“So you’re saying I should be willing to bend my principles, and allow myself to be pigeon-holed?”

It made sense in a twisted sort of way. If our enemies expected me to act like a text-book villain, they would profile me as such, and I’d have the advantage of surprise on them.

“Right now, your profile is ‘true believer’ — you have ideological agendas, and you’re willing to go to any length to carry them out. Even Kaiser isn’t that inflexible.

“If instead you aim for ‘drug kingpin,’ there’ll be much less resistance; hell, being nefarious, intelligent and enigmatic is a better play than ‘fanatic.’ Coil did that.”

I pursed my lips into a crooked smile. “So… I need a PR department?”

“How many people have you tagged with your power? Ordinary humans, I mean.”

“Hundreds.”

Lisa folded her arms. “Then you’re your own damn PR department. Taylor, you’re smarter than me.”

But somewhere, somehow, I didn’t want to play politics and fit in boxes. I wanted to… Well, there was the motivated cognition.


	117. K♠

I’d become a criminal because I’d screwed up my own brain. With trepidation and dread I quietly began evaluating my personality changes from two years ago until now, sorting each change according to cause best as I could: developmental psychology, bullying, and my power.

I’d never have been so open or blasé with regards to my sexuality — partly because psychological trauma was a depressor of the sexual urge, partly because I’d spent months sexing myself up deliberately. Thinking that the Taylor I wanted to be needed to be sexy and sexually liberated.

I’d forgiven Emma. Sure, it was nice to have a strained — now even more so — relationship to her, but I’d been inconsequently vindictive and self-serving in forgiving her. My old self would have traded her for a tic-tac.

My father was afraid of me, and I was surprisingly OK with it.

“Taylor? You zoned out for a second there. You can think all this over in due time; it’s not like you’ll forget.”

I broke my reverie, and returned to the topic at hand: “I need to cultivate an image of… Perhaps being a rebel. A dark knight. Working for the common good, with evil means — going where the heroes can’t.”

“That’s not going to buy you any favors from the villains — hell, establishing a gang presence is going to be difficult.”

I shook my head. “How many disenfranchised middle-class workers do you think there are out there?”

“You wanna start a socialist revolution—”

I smiled. “Why not? Ever since superpowers became a reality, the whole red-scare thing has been supplanted by cape politics.”

Lisa giggled. “And if they call you a communist?”

I struck a pose. “I’m a patriot; a vanguard of the American Dream. I’m the daughter of a unionist! I’m from a modest home; I rose to my position with a sub-par power by being wily, working hard, and never giving up!”

“The mirror image of Brockton Bay’s own patriotic hero,” Lisa said. “She’s an immigrant who loves America, you know.”

“We’re both immigrants,” I corrected. “My lineage is European — somewhere.”

“French,” Lisa said. “But enough about image and keeping us safe; we need to give you a full psych evaluation. Fortunately, I’ve pulled some as-of-yet unreleased Master/Stranger protocol tests from the PRT internal systems. And also we’ll put you through a battery of personality tests.”

“We also need to check whether my skill-granting ability is safe—” I began.

“Already did; the personality changes are negligible, and it doesn’t implant Master suggestions of any kind detectable to this PRT protocol or my own powers.”

“Let’s get started,” I said, and Lisa went to fetch a pile of papers and a laptop.

* * *

Three hours of grueling psych evaluation was harder on Lisa than me. I took care not to use my power to alter my cognition chemically — a habit, these days.

I’d taken every personality test conceivable; whether scientifically sound or not. Lisa had grilled me with hundreds of carefully chosen questions, hooked me up to an honest-to-god EEG machine, complained that she didn’t have an fMRI, compensated with her power, and written over fifty pages of notes.

“I think I have a fairly accurate diagnosis,” she eventually said. I was evaluating our lunch options and making coffee.

“Yeah?”

“You’re human.”

I snorted. “What?”

“Yeah, that’s just what I mean. You’re a parahuman with an incredibly dangerous power, but cognitively, you’re still very human. You’re driven by grudges, repressed urges, various complexes — all of which you could get rid of with your power.

“Editing your brain unsupervised was… I wouldn’t say bad, but perhaps suboptimal. You function on principles that make sense to humans, because humans are very limited. A good early fix is to go over all your previous conclusions and think them through. Complete do-over of everything you have decided since February.”

I poured the steamed milk into our cups. “That’s a tall order.”

“Oh, that’s not even the worst. To a large degree, you need to eliminate affect as a decision making parameter.”

“That is potentially devastating blow to all my personal relationships,” I protested.

Lisa shook her head. “Not entirely. See, I propose you create a cleaner mind design in general: while I despise the way Thinker powers like my own are in general just a human brain with a big cognitive hammer welded to it, and then you hope every problem you encounter is nail-shaped. You should do something like it, but perhaps more elegant.

“Taylor needs to be DEFCON 5, so to speak. That strategy you created to defeat Coil? DEFCON 3, at most. You need a way to go full hard-reason long-term-plan no-sacrifice-too-holy-to-consider DEFCON 1. You need to be power with a Taylor stapled to it.

“Humanity makes you vulnerable and puts the rest of us in danger. You need to leave it behind when you fight and plan. Cost-benefit analysis needs to be the first tool you reach for, not affect. No more sacrificing yourself. I’m describing this badly…”

I handed her a cup. “You’re basically describing why humans are bad at getting things done,” I said.

She nodded. “Gosh I’m already burned out.”

I took her hand and restored her in seconds. “A step towards optimally achieving my goals is to use my human side to do social interaction with my loved ones only, and then have a much larger set of personalities — no, scratch that; states of consciousness, to occupy.

“I ran into that problem when I initially started changing. Put some ethical systems in place, but it wasn’t enough to overcome affect.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.


	118. A♡

My power worked appreciably faster now than it had when I had first sat out on my quest towards becoming better. While Lisa rested — that is to say, mindlessly browsed her news feed — I meditated.

It would be easy enough to work up an entirely new brain from scratch with the properties I wanted it to have; but doing it to myself while maintaining sanity and continuity was something else entirely. Would that I could throw it all away and start anew — the anthem of the Inventor.

There was also the matter of ensuring I could control my cognition should my power become unavailable. Easy enough to work up a system depending on my nano-manipulators to handle the hard parts, but I had to have it all be chemistry.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the upgrades to the components of my cognition I had made — nothing wrong with my better memory, my stronger ethical reasoning, better language processing, faster cognition, sharper senses, higher willpower. All in all I had done a marvelous job. But still a hack-job.

The problem ultimately lay in the emergent interplay between every component, and the baggage I had taken with me in the form of memories and values, thought patterns and affect.

The unity of personality most people believed in was ultimately fabrication. The human brain was two hemispheres — two different brains, connected by a thin wire. In my brain, the connection was much greater, but still, emergence At a finer level, the brain consisted of brain centers: clusters of neurons capable of great local data-exchange, but again understandable in terms of single entities communicating.

My power was quicker to analyze, quicker to correlate with my memory and it’s own data storage, and quicker to suggest; making much more advanced suggestions. In flashes I evaluated entire branches of possibility, rejecting many wholesale. Allowances and concessions and compromises had to be made at every turn, but gradually I found the core of the idea I needed.

A smile may have graced my lips — here I was, in the same category as Thompson and Ritchie, or perhaps Eilenberg and Lane. Laying groundwork for generations of neurological research to come; if I ever got around to writing any of it down.

With a sure hand I began rethreading my entire connectome, disestablishing known structures, and conjuring my own from scratch.

Copying every kind of memory; re-mapping every cognitive association; transferring ethical axioms; encoding personality in the new substrate…

“Taylor.”

The words came from far outside myself.

“Taylor, you’ve been at this for three hours; I’m getting a little nervous.”

The voice was Lisa’s. Lisa was a friend — an asset — a friend. Important to psychological stability of the terminal self, useful information source to the instrumental self.

I was nameless. Taylor was the goal of my existence. A humanity to be served, trusted to know the end goals, the source of the parameters of every problem to be solved.

Lisa was concerned for my wellbeing. I needed to reassure her.

* * *

Step one was to break meditation.

“Sorry,” I said, opening my eyes. My new emotions and empathy integrated themselves, my perfect control abated, and I sighed.

Lisa looked skeptical.

“I forgot the time. Literally.” Part of my mind began spinning an episodic narrative of the dissociative episode I had just used to radically alter my mind. Retrospective analysis along with it, classifying the various times where my decision-making had to have been suspended; yet the subjective feeling that I was in control had remained.

“You’re done already,” she said.

I stood and stretched. Gradually my awareness of everything save my identity as Taylor faded. Perhaps a fitting name for the rest was my ‘exo-self.’ My blood sugar was low, and my liver was compensating, but a hearty meal was in order.

“I can multitask. We need to do another psych eval.”

I dipped into my cognitive reserves for an impartial assessment. It was time-critical that I verify the fidelity of the changes, but doing so would be a strain on Lisa.

She felt responsible for me.

* * *

Locking away Taylor, I began working through the personality questionnaires, only to find myself answering ‘not applicable’ to most of them.

“Do you think it’s a good idea to do this on DEFCON 1?” Lisa asked me.

“It is potentially the most dangerous,” I replied, at ease. Even if Lisa would see through any charade I put on — either to convince her of my humanity or my inhumanity — it paid dividends not to fall into the uncanny valley.

“Let’s just run you through the Master/Stranger tests, then.”

I held out a hand. “Run your power at maximum intensity during the entire test; I know you’ve been keeping it on standby for everything other than getting a baseline out of the personality tests. I want every bit of info you can give me.”

She looked from my hand to my face — deliberately expressionless so as to obviously signal that she was not talking to Taylor.

She took it, and I cleared up the beginnings of her migraine. Second restoration in a day; she would need one more after this.

“First part of the test is verbal. I will be asking you questions, the software will record vocal stress and response time, as well as consult your EEG readouts. Please answer as quickly as possible.

“What is your name?”


	119. 2♡

“A mugger accosts an elderly man in a dark alley across the street. What do you do?”

“I call the police, checks the old man for injuries, and if he is well; follow the mugger.”

“What is the appropriate response to a stranger telling you their mother has died?”

“Offering my condolences.”

“President Nixon resigned after the Watergate scandal broke. Do you agree with this course of action?”

“Yes.”

“What is your opinion on medical professionals in general?”

“A public benefit.”

* * *

“You are waiting for a friend in a convertible in the day. The weather is light rain. An Asian man comes up to you with a bouquet of yellow roses, and gives them to you. How do you react?”

“I thank him, smell the roses, and ask him what the occasion is.”

“You are waiting in a sedan at night. The weather is heavy rain. A littler girl in a raincoat comes up to you with an oyster pail of Thai food, and gives it to you. Same question.”

“I thank her, and ask her where her parents are. I do not eat the food.”

* * *

A picture of a decaying dog-corpse.

“Potential bio-hazard.”

A picture of a waterfall.

“Natural treasure.”

A picture of a restaurant interior.

“Depending on reviews, a good place for business negotiation over dinner.”

Six children in a sandbox.

“Kindergarten excursion.”

* * *

Lisa fell back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. With one hand she turned the laptop so I could inspect the results. “You’re in the clear.”

The assessment classified me as ‘safe.’ Only major deviation was low response time and lack of affective reasoning. Recommended me for therapy, even.

“Good,” I said. “Well done. What’s your personal assessment?”

“There’s some… Oddities, I’d say. But it doesn’t look like anything can really get under your skin — that’s by far the main danger. I’ve broken people just by talking; can’t do that with you.”

That was a good start, but I needed more data. I needed to find an excuse to be close to Glory Girl, and to talk to Alcott.

With that thought, I shed my terrible purpose and became Taylor again. Lisa tilted her head. “We’re done, just like that?”

“Just like that,” I echoed.

She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. “How do you feel?”

There wasn’t really a good answer to that question.

“Oh, by the way!” She got up and ran over to her desk, still dressed in her sleeping tee, despite it being mid afternoon. She came back with a tablet and handed it to me, showcasing a news article.

> Bad Canary found Guilty.
> 
> The famed and beloved songstress Canary aka. Paige McAbee was found guilty of attempted murder earlier today.

I skimmed the body of the article.

“She’s essentially innocent; the prosecution has been working the Master paranoia angle. Judge sentenced her to life in the Birdcage.”

It was an opportunity. “What’s the PRT chatter on her transfer?”

“Internal memo at the PRT says she’ll be shipped out in a convoy with Lung — he was found fit to stand trial, which is a hoot; I’ve read his attending neurologist’s assessment, it’s basically perjury. Transfer is next week, undecided final date.”

A plan was already forming in my mind, with several moving parts. “Forward me the most accurate info you have on the prisoner transfer,” I said. “At earliest convenience.”

Lisa cocked her head. “You don’t want to do it now?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Taylor, they might decide to ship out on Monday. They’re sending out decoys all week.”

I nodded. “They almost never do — they haven’t settled on a date for security purposes, but that just means they will pick somewhere in the middle of the week. Humans just don’t think that way. Besides, I owe you a date.”

Then I took out my phone to call Dad and say I’d be out all night.


	120. 3♡

Lisa owned Coil’s rolodex as CEO of Inhuman Resources and I owned his soul.

I reached for a burner phone and a memorized number, and for the first time I felt like a crime lord — just calling up someone to commit a felony on my behalf.

Falsifying a picture ID was actually fairly easy and quick with the right tools. What was neither quick nor easy was convincing the guy at the other end of the line that I was dead serious.

Far easier than getting a picture ID lined up for me was getting a hold of a supplier — a bio-chemist — and ordering exactly two uncut safe-dosage pills MDMA.

In my finite but large foresight, I had brought a suitable outfit. Risqué, but classy: red leather jacket, black bikini top, spandex jeans and boots with not too much heel. For accessories: bangles, rings, a dozen earrings and various other piercings. With my power it was trivial to open up channels in my flesh — six in each ear, one in a nostril, one in each cheek, three in my lower lip.

Extensive designs of red and black melanin across my chest, arms and neck; and a slight change to the fat-tissue distribution in my face completed the transformation. With my physique and face, I ordinarily looked like an unreasonably athletic teenager; now I looked like a grown woman.

Up against the white bathroom wall, I positioned myself for a mug-shot selfie, and sent it it to the forger I had commissioned. Then I braided my hair into a tight queue. I had grown it back longer than it had been before I had to impersonate Samantha. It had the kind of fullness that one otherwise only saw in hair product commercials.

Lisa didn’t comment, but I could see the envy in her face as I exited the bathroom — I’d taken twenty minutes to rinse off, not even bothering with soap, combing my hair through, and turning into a different person.

I playfully stuck out my tongue at her and forked it — cleanly parting the flesh.

“OK, that just looked disturbing,” she said. “I know you were aiming for sexy, but I’m not into body horror.”

“I’m heading out to see a man about a dog,” I said. “Take your time.”

“Unlike you,” she said and closed the bathroom door rather sharply.

* * *

I hailed a cab and pulled a bundle of bills out of my purse, offering it to the surprised-looking black guy behind the wheel.

“I’m in need of a driver for about an hour. I tip very generously.”

“Where to, ma’am?”

I gave him the first address and dropped out of Taylor, into my exo-self.

In order to rescue Canary, I’d need every asset available — which included getting to touch Labyrinth, as per Dinah’s estimates. That was probably most easily achieved by directly hiring Faultline to help us with the Jailbreak.

We needed specifications on the trucks, road-closures, Dragon’s likely response — I had been a cape geek, and Birdcage transport jailbreaks weren’t small news. Dragon was usually a first responder with some manner of gunship.

That would necessitate some sort of anti-air response, either heavy weapons for myself or using Sundancer and Ballistic. Ballistic didn’t have a weight-limit, so perhaps finding him some mid-sized arrow-shaped projectiles — military grade armor penetrating flechettes would be best, but I wasn’t picky, nor were we really rich enough to get heavy material like that on a whim.

Sundancer on the other hand was supremely destructive on her own, but from what I could piece together from her combat habits tended to act defensively with her… Sun. Which would obscure line of sight, obviously. It also demanded significant concentration.

As for myself, I doubted Dragon had anything that was particularly vulnerable to high-caliber armor piercing rifles, but I was going to try anyway.

Bitch’s dogs was ample mobility if we chose to go through terrain — almost all the routes up to Canada passed through at least some stretches of forest, and barring a Parahuman tracker, I was fairly confident I’d be able to steal the skill sets of a few Green Berets or rangers and use that — in fact I already had at least two snapshots of survivalists to draw from.

Some sort of distraction would be good. Depending on the roadblocks it might be possible to ram the prisoner transport truck — using Trickster to swap out the driver at the last second.

There were lots of options and I wasn’t even considering using Faultline’s team. The villain Madcap had broken out prisoners solo, and I had a team of fourteen if I hired Faultline.

I was broken from my thoughts, and quickly dropped back into Taylor. “There’s another tip in it for you if you stick around,” I said and stepped out to meet my Masters-degree laden drug dealer at the other end of the parking lot. One glance told me the cabbie had no intention of disappearing on me.

He white, bespectacled, clean-shaven and combed and neatly dressed — the image of a college erudite.

“Seventy milligram pressed pills,” he said in a quiet voice. “Corn starch filler, I pressed them this morning.”

“If there is a problem with these, my employer will give you a hard time,” I responded and indiscreetly handed him one hundred dollars in small bills. He just as brazenly gave me a small plastic bag with two pills in it.

* * *

My next appointment was a simple dead-drop, since I wasn’t paying cash for my fake ID card — the forger had been regularly commissioned by Coil, and took bank transfers from shell corporations.


	121. 4♡

My slightly befuddled taxi driver, ultimately content with the fact that he had made over a hundred dollars driving me around for an hour, put me back at Lisa’s safe house address, and I waited there for her.

She came down in a navy blue double-breasted skirt and a white blouse, neatly contrasting my own color choice. Her hair was loose, and her makeup was significant — contrasting my own subtle eye-liner and nothing. She had a leather satchel by her hip secured with two straps across her shoulder and hip.

I was carrying what I needed in my jacket’s inner pockets.

“You look good,” I said and meant it. My pulse quickened a little — perhaps deliberately, perhaps not. I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth.

She smiled that fox-like smile. “Shall we?”

* * *

As we sat down in the back seat, I handed the driver one last wad of bills. “Last trip,” I said. “Do you know where the Palanquin is?”

“The nightclub?” he said.

I nodded and we accelerated. I took Lisa’s hand and let my power reach for her eardrum.

‘Let’s speak privately,’ I spoke directly in her ear.

She subvocalized her reply, and it was easy enough to turn the suppressed motorical impulses into actual words using my model of her. ‘Interesting.’

‘What’s the plan?’ I asked.

‘We get drunk, get high, see where things lead?’

‘I might pay Faultline a visit. Want to come?’

Lisa looked at me, betraying that we were communicating — not that the driver would notice anything, nor care. ‘In your civvies?’

‘We need a private chauffeur,’ I said. ‘Yes, in your civvies. In my civvies. I need to gain her trust if I want her to become permanent assets. I need to get close to Labyrinth.’

‘There’s a window in a building behind the Palanquin which can see through the window into a room where they sometimes keep Labyrinth. Trickster could do a swap, and you could erase her memory of the event.’

‘I know,’ I replied. ‘Which is why we’re not going to do that. Tell me, how would Faultline react if she found out we had done that? From what I can tell, Faultline has an almost motherly protectiveness of Labyrinth.’

Lisa looked out the window, scowling. ‘Whatever you say boss.’

‘Remember also that as long as you’re with me, things like faces, hair-colors, physique and other identifying characteristics are about as reliable to our enemies as PHO rumors.’

‘I like my face, though.’

* * *

The Palanquin was busy. The line was fairly long outside. Lisa just went up to the bouncer by the velvet rope, gestured for him to come closer and said:

“We’re here on behalf of Para Bellum and the Undersiders with a job offer.”

“Right this way, ma’am,” he said and unhooked the rope, letting us inside. “She’s up on the first floor in her office.” He gestured for another bouncer, and we were escorted inside and to the stairs up.

Inside the club there was already a din of shouted conversation and loud dance music. The lights were dampened, the bar was busy but not overly so, and the dance floor was populated but not crowded.

Much the same as first time I was there, we ran into Newt, who seemed to serve as both guard and drug dealer. Several people, mostly young women, lay around in bean-bag chairs in hallucinogenic hazes. I let go and fell into total control and clarity.

“What’s this?” Newt said, looking at the bouncer.

“For Faultline,” was the reply.

Newt nodded and dismissed him with a hand gesture. “She’ll see you now,” he said and led us to the very same door as I had been to the other day. He gestured at a panel, and a few seconds later the door opened on an electric door opener — presumably a system put in place to prevent Newt’s secretions from contaminating commonly touched surfaces.

As I walked past him, I reached out and put my hand on his chest. He attempted to lean out of the way as I did. The — I suppose ‘nanomachines’ would be the term in my mind from now on — entered my bloodstream and met a wall of nanoscopic razors.

“What the—” Newt said.

“Doesn’t have quite the bite the second time,” I said and entered the office. Lisa trailed after me.

“You’re Para Bellum,” Faultline said. “Height and build matches, and if I’m not mistaken, your voice.”

I nodded. “Notice also that my skin color is different,” — I switched to Faultline’s voice — “and you can never be sure about the voice, either.”

She looked from me to Lisa. “And this is your… Girlfriend?”

I snickered, Lisa snorted. “No, I’m— what was that lovely term Para Bellum used the other day? Your nemesis?”

“Tattletale,” Faultline said.

“This is a peace offering,” I said. “I know it’s not much for me to show my face when I have a Stranger classification. My name is Taylor Hebert, this is Lisa.”

“You said you have a job offer, was that just a bluff?”

Lisa cleared her throat. “Canary. Birdcage transport. Prison break. One of the days this week.”

“You’ll be cooperating with the Undersiders and the Travelers,” I added. “Thirteen capes total. Should be a walk in the park. We’re prepared to offer you significant payment and promise of future contracts and access to my own abilities with regards to the condition of your three team mates.”

I took out a card that had my name, home phone, a reliable burner, a throwaway E-mail account, and my home address upon it. “Here’s my card.”


	122. 5♡

Faultline inspected the card. Then she picked up her laptop and began running my info through a search engine. “I’m assuming you want something from me?” she said.

“I want to take a look at Labyrinth. By the information I have now given you, as well as my most valuable team-mate being within your power, you have the advantage of leverage,” I said. “We’ll also pay you up front. And you also know I want your future loyalty, and I might potentially be able to make Labyrinth better.”

It was a ploy: paint myself as Vulcan-like, unemotional, purely concerned with rationality. Faultline was a smart woman, no doubt about it, good at thinking about incentives.

“What’s in it for you?” Faultline asked.

I glanced at Lisa. “We have it on precognitive authority,” she said, “that the Trump aspect of Taylor’s powers will receive a significant boost.”

“Possibly enough to revive one of the Travelers from the dead,” I said. “If it turns out to work, I’ll add ‘revivification’ to the services you can call upon from me.”

Faultline paused.

“You also have my word,” I said. “Which I never break.”

“I’ve seen a certain video wherein you promise Coil a new face, money, and freedom,” Faultline said. “Isn’t he dead?”

“A new face, adequate funds. Where you go after that is up to you,” I quoted. “I shot him in the face, and I’ll pay for his funeral. Never did I say I wouldn’t harm him.

“I promise I won’t harm Labyrinth. I won’t affect her mind any more than average sensory experiences can, and should she suffer from detrimental physiological conditions, I will see what I can do to better them. You have my word.”

Faultline considered this. “Labyrinth is lucid at the moment, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Newt said.

“You can ask her consent, then.”

* * *

Faultline led us to a room down the hall, gestured for us to stand back, and knocked twice. The door was answered, and Faultline gave a brief instruction: “Masks on. Official visit for Labyrinth.”

Then we got to wait for two minutes while Labyrinth and whoever else was in the room got dressed. I took Lisa’s hand again.

‘Any input?’ I asked

‘You’re playing at being less socially adept than you are,’ she subvocalized. ‘Because you don’t want to come off as a master manipulator, lest Faultline gets suspicious. Clever.’

‘So, no, you don’t have any input,’ I replied and snickered.

She stuck her tongue out at me. ‘And now you’re being smug and annoying on purpose. Is that part of the plan too?’

‘No, but Taylor likes it.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Please don’t talk about yourself like that.’

The door opened and Spitfire stepped out to take a look at us. Lisa waved. She looked at Faultline for confirmation and got a nod in return. Only then were we let in.

Labyrinth was a small young woman — maybe a little younger than Lisa. Blond hair, stick thin. She was wearing her face-concealing mask, but not the usual cloak.

“Hello,” I said.

“Labyrinth, Spitfire,” Faultline said. “This is Para Bellum. Her true power is that she is a healer like Panacea.”

“What?” Spitfire asked.

“I can heal myself,” I said. “And make myself and others stronger, faster, and smarter. I’m not as quick as Panacea, but I can heal brains.”

Faultline continued: “I’ve given her permission to take a look at your condition, Labyrinth. The final decision is up to you whether you let her. She’s promised not to do anything drastic, and I trust her.”

Labyrinth looked me over.

“Do I have permission to use my power on you?” I asked. “It works by touch.”

She held out her bare hand, and I took it.

* * *

Labyrinth was undernourished, but not critically so. She didn’t get quite enough exercise either. She had scars, but not many, and an immune system that bore witness to a sheltered lifestyle. As unusually I began going over small annoyances and buildups of waste and toxins.

Her brain, however, was a different story and I let my hypotheses shift. The two brain centers responsible for powers — the Corona Pollentia and the Gemma, were different in every person, because every power was different. Mine sat in the Corpus Callosum and extended towards the parietal cerebral cortex and down into the Hippocampus. Heavily integrated with the somatomotoric and somatosensoric centers of my brain, as well as spatial memory. Or it had been before I refurbished the inside of my skull.

That explained my power having to do with the inside of my own body, spatial relation, and coordination. It was also large, and had strange neuron bundles spreading into other parts of my brain.

Initially I had chalked that up to coincidence. My points of reference — My team, Coil, Panacea, Dinah, the thee Empire capes, the Travelers, Newt, had all been sufficiently different that I only had vague, over-fitted classifications.

Labyrinth presented a black swan. Her gemma and corona were large, spread across her hippocampus, up into both temporal lobes and into the occipital cortex and cerebellum. And what’s more, I could see what I was fairly certain was some of the same patterns that had been in my brain.

Which made myself and Labyrinth different from Lisa, Brian, Alec, Rachel, Panacea, Night, Victor and Othala. Which I, now that I had confirmation of an outlier being its own separate category, were also different from Coil, Krouse, Marissa, Jess, Luke, Noelle, Oliver and Newt. Within the last cluster, Noelle and Newt were more similar than the rest, but different from each other, while Oliver was an outlier.

What did that mean? I wished I had some way to dive into their episodic memories with any sort of ease; as it were I had to backtrack from the patterns of neurological activity I could simulate in my power’s mindspace and try to guess — emotions and affect and associations were easy, but any actual content: events, speech, specific details, were a toss-up.

Myself and Labyrinth were more similar to Lisa, Brian, Alec, Rachel, Dinah, Night, Victor, Othala and Panacea, but different as well.


	123. 6♡

There were rumors that powers could be brought. There were a few documented cases of second triggers. I had at least some credence that the Travelers and Coil had purchased their powers, except the psychology didn’t fit. Newter being in the same group — I knew enough of Case 53’s to know that they seemed to wake up with no memory — didn’t bode well.

Me and Labyrinth were second-triggers. I had probably had two trigger events in the locker, then. The only other candidate was when Night had tried to kill me, but I think I would have noticed if my brain suddenly changed.

“Labyrinth, I have reason to believe you are a second-trigger,” I said. Only three seconds had elapsed.

“What?” she said.

“Have you heard of Narwhal, the Guild cape?” I said. “It explains why you are so powerful, and why your power causes you such difficulties. Have you experienced more than one traumatic event, or was your initial trigger event particularly horrific?”

“I… Uh,” she said, and I could see her distress begin to activate her power. In a few minutes her ‘lucidity’ would begin to fade, and as much as I would like to study it, I’d rather not see that Faultline distrusted me for messing up.

“You don’t have to answer if it’s making you uncomfortable,” I said. “I can see that you are beginning to lose lucidity, would you like me to use my power to prevent that?”

“Uh… Yeah,” she muttered.

I intervened, modulating the outgoing signals from her power. “How is that?”

She looked back at me — no doubt achieving eye contact, I could tell from her head movement. Her gaze had drifted off when her episode began.

“Better,” she said.

“Now,” I said. “Bad news is, it is definitely your power doing this to you, which makes it harder for me to do something about. Good news is I have done something similar to myself.”

“How long does it take?” Faultline asked.

“A month or more,” I replied. “It is also not guaranteed to work, but the risk will be minimal as I can undo everything I might attempt and we can stop the procedure any time.”

“Prognosis?” Faultline said.

“Best case scenario is that she makes a full recovery, maintaining lucidity at all times while being able to use her power at peak capacity. A worse outcome is that I fit her with an ‘off’ switch, so she can choose between lucidity and power at will.”

I let go of Labyrinth’s hand. “Thank you for your time and trust,” I said to Labyrinth. She seemed perplexed by the situation.

I turned to Faultline. “Now if you won’t mind, I’d like to take my date downstairs and use your facilities. We can discuss business in the morning.”

* * *

I dropped back down to normal as we reached the stairs.

‘Did it work?’ Lisa subvocalized.

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘You learned something.’

‘Coil purchased his power. The Travelers got their powers the same way, as did Newt.’

‘So Cauldron or whoever is selling powers is also making the Case 53’s. Probably human experimentation by-products. Damn,’ she said.

‘Never mind that now, but I’m going to have us look into the nature and origin of powers when we have some spare time,’ I said.

We came down to the club proper once more, and Lisa pulled me to the bar. “We’re going to get drunk and do drugs,” she shouted over the din of conversation and dance music. “Two firsts for you — so please promise me you won’t use your power to metabolize everything before it can fuck you up.”

“I promise,” I yelled back.

We reached the bar and Lisa flagged down the bartender. “Two Baileys over ice.”

“Coffee cream liqueur?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It’s impossible to mess up — and I know when a bartender messes up — and it’s one of the few kinds of alcohol I can stand. You’ll like it.”

* * *

We found a table, and I took a sip of sweetened cream with coffee extract and a rather high alcohol content.

She leaned in over the table. “Do you think you could fit me with an off switch?”

“Yes,” I said. “Why?”

“Have I told you how I can’t turn my power off?”

“I think so.”

“It’s barring me from doing a lot of stuff just because I gross myself out. There’s quite a few things we politely keep secret for very good reasons.”

“I don’t gross you out?” I asked.

“Only downside was the fact that you had somehow turned suicidal tendencies into a core moral tenet. But you were willing to, and did fix that.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. That out of the way, let’s play a fun game.”

“What?”

“People watching.”

* * *

I was good. Lisa was better. While waiting for the club to turn interesting enough to warrant taking our two pills. Lisa went through two more glasses of Baileys, while I had an old-fashioned, a gin-and-tonic, and a pint of beer.

About a third of the club-goers had drugs with them, and Lisa spotted two dealers working the floor. We flagged both of them to the bouncers.

The clock turned ten and Lisa emptied her drink and gestured meaningfully to me. I handed her the bag with the two pills, and she quickly took both, before pulling me close and kissing me deeply. She was a very good kisser, and she tasted like cream from her drink of choice.

When she was done, I had one of the pills. I swallowed, allowing myself to blush.


	124. 7♡

I woke up and took stock of my surroundings. I was back in Lisa’s apartment, in her bed. Lisa was next to me, asleep with her arm lazily draped across my chest. My skin was back to normal, my piercings were out and the holes gone.

My memory wasn’t as forthcoming with the previous night’s events as I would have liked, so I dropped into my exo-self — only to find a previously made conclusion waiting: sure, I might reconstruct the events of last night from my secondary memory systems, but it would be much more fun not to.

So I slid back into my right mind, and began doing some old-fashioned detective work. First, Lisa was in her pajamas, and I had worn some sort of over-sized tee to bed, which probably ruled out us having been up to any sort of chemically altered sexual activity. A quick indexing of my own and Lisa’s body chemistry and some mental math told me when approximately we had imbibed our last round of drinks. The amount of MDMA left in our systems told me what time it was — eleven in the morning.

Gingerly, I lifted Lisa’s arm off me and went in search of the taxi bill which I had a vague notion that I wouldn’t have either declined or thrown out. My breath reeked, and I was dehydrated and generally unhygienic. My stomach content told me what we had picked for a midnight snack, coming home. Given the effects of MDMA, and our respective powers, it might have been either of us who suggested it.

There was a hickey on my neck.

To the best of my diminished capacity, I was able to verify that it had been a good night.

I grabbed a phone, to call home and order breakfast, while considering my options for getting clean without waking Lisa. I already knew where she was in her sleep cycle, so I might even time it with the breakfast.

“Hey Dad,” I said when he picked up. “I spent the night at Lisa’s place.”

“Good to hear from you, Taylor,” he replied. “How’s the hangover?”

“Nonexistent,” I said with a smile. “I’m not coming home just yet, I’ll call you later.”

“OK. Take care.”

* * *

“Hey,” Lisa said, finally emerging from the bedroom. I’d woken her with the milk steamer on her espresso machine — quite one purpose.

I must have looked like the image of hyper-competence: neatly dressed in clean clothes, clean, not a quirk in my demeanor to suggest I’d done hard drugs just the day before, and having a varied breakfast ready for the both of us.

“Hey yourself,” I said.

She looked at the breakfast options while I poured her latte. “French fries?”

“Sodium imbalance,” I replied. “Chicken sandwiches for the amino acids to make up for lost dopamine, norepinephrene and serotonin. Aspirin for the pain, caffeine for the residual fatigue.”

“Or I could get my super powered girlfriend to fix me,” Lisa said.

“I haven’t even fixed myself yet,” I said. “I’m taking it as a stress test. Help yourself,” I said and got up. She passed me and planted a kiss on my cheek; which had me flushing a little when I started changing the bed-sheets.

* * *

“Did I use my power a lot yesterday?” Lisa called out to me from the bathroom.

“Memory loss,” I replied.

She muttered a curse. “You need to fix my Thinker headache, and while you’re at it, I think we should stop playing around at the hangover game. I appreciate the gesture.”

With a mental command, I let my power sweep my system, breaking down toxins in my liver and evening imbalances in my brain. In the two seconds it took me to reach Lisa, I became almost completely sober.

She was standing by the mirror, with a large towel wrapped around her, looking at her less-than-fresh visage in the mirror.

It took about the same amount of time from taking her hand until she was as well, and I saw her sag with relief.

“Oh, much better,” she said. “Now we can actually get something useful done— except?”

In retrospect I suppose I saw her pupil dilation far enough in advance that I might have pre-empted it. She closed the distance to me, and the towel ensuring her modesty hit the floor.

* * *

At one o’clock, I was pretty much back where I started the day: in Lisa’s bed, with her next to me, one arm draped across my chest. Only this time there was a rather more natural cause behind our altered brain chemistry and fatigue.

“That was fun,” she said.

I brushed her hair behind her ear. “Yeah.”

Showering afterwards we unwisely did together, and it was almost half past two when we were once again ready to do something productive.

* * *

We had a light lunch at a café down the street that Lisa probably gauged had an acceptable amount of cockroaches in the kitchen — and crucially was outside her apartment, meaning it starkly limited how easily we could ‘accidentally’ end up spending the whole day in bed.

“So,” Lisa said quietly. “Apart from getting ten plus capes to bust out Canary as a charity-slash-PR-stunt, you’re planning something which involves resurrecting the dead in some way. Noelle?”

I nodded. “It’ll secure the Traveler’s unconditional loyalty for the foreseeable future.”

“They are also away from home,” Lisa said.

I nodded. “I read your note. Parallel universe transfer is a lot easier than fixing broken powers, though.”

She nodded. “You said ‘big and fleshy.’ Any specifics?”

“I’ve got it narrowed down to the boat graveyard, abandoned access tunnels, and Coil’s half-constructed secondary backup base. I’m assuming we’re taking over his primary backup bunker?” A nod. “It’s a big plus with ventilation, sanitation and flowing water — there will be waste both of the biological and heat variety.”

Lisa nodded. “That sounds disgusting and very productive. How are you going to get the biomass?”

“Rachel.”

“Ah.”


	125. 8♡

The call went through. “What do you want.”

“Rachel, it’s me,” I said. “I need a favor.”

“Sure, what?”

“You know how when your dogs shrink they shed all their flesh?”

“Yeah?”

“I need that. I’m sending a van. Bring all your dogs. It’ll take you to one of Coil’s old bases.”

“That’s pretty weird, but OK.”

I smiled. “Oh you have no idea.”

* * *

Coil’s tertiary secret underground lair was a lot less glamorous than the plans I had seen for his secondary one, and what I had witnessed of his primary one first hand.

It was compact. The biggest room was obviously intended for Noelle, and it seemed fitting for my purposes.

Waiting for Rachel to arrive, I activated the ventilation systems, the cell phone repeaters, and unspooled some fire hoses to jury rig sanitation and ‘irrigation.’ There was flowing water off a nearby water main in a manner which I didn’t think was on-the-books, and similarly clandestine connection to the sewers.

She arrived well before I had everything ready and I went out to meet her by the entrance.

The entrance was a utility shed which contained a rather steep stairway down.

Rachel was dressed the same as always, in something that looked very much like a poster for goodwill and army surplus, but carrying a book bag and wearing what appeared to be reading glasses. Behind her trailed her gaggle of dogs.

I was wearing a coverall and carrying a tool box.

“The stairs are steep,” I said.

Some of her dogs were already about waist height.

“That doesn’t matter,” she said.

That was the extent of the conversation. I led her down the stairs and her dogs followed. Through concrete hallways and to the large chamber.

“Put… Five in here and the rest whereever you can fit them. Call me when they’re as big as they can get,” I said.

“Then what?”

“I use my power to put them to sleep, extract their real bodies, and wake them up. You’ll be out of here in an hour at most.

Rachel shrugged. “Might stick around. Got any water for the dogs?”

“Might take a few hours. No bowls,” I replied.

* * *

Rachel grew her dogs over the course of fifteen minutes to their absolutely largest sizes — all thirteen of them. Then I went around and with a touch put each of them to sleep, before reaching in and through flesh, liquefying it as I went along and pulling out the dogs themselves for Rachel to have back. It was neat, if not clean.

Then it was a matter of moving over fifteen tons of flesh from side rooms into the main vault. That part had me stumped for the moment; doing it by wheelbarrow would take on the order of the entire day.

“So, what now?” she asked.

I looked at her, to confirm the genuine curiosity she almost radiated. Rachel had very little subtlety.

“Now I gotta figure out how to make something useful out of all of this,” I replied and put moth hands in one of the carcasses. Not that I didn’t know what it was made of, or how to probably go about making something useful out of it.

Compositionally, it was high in protein and bone, low in fat. Most of the bulk was muscles, some kind of short-term energy storage, and connective tissue. The tendons were significantly stronger than the ones found in regular animal flesh, and the whole system was designed around not needing much in the way of energy distribution systems.

That was how the dog monsters worked, when animals of similar tonnage — African buffalo, polar bears, mooses, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and the like were all significantly less spry: tendons capable of taking much greater impacts, enormous amounts of connective tissue, unreasonably dense bone, and no care for whether the machine worked for more than a few hours.

The energy stores seemed to be what Bitch’s power interfaced with to keep the dogs healthy: full of sugars, fats and stemcells. I doubted a dog would last for more than a few hours of fighting no matter how much Bitch could stay close to it. They could be injured so bad that they had to shrink and be re-grown to recover.

I let my power shave off skin from my palm, converting it to stem cells and seeding them into the carcass of one of the dogs, which I was letting liquefy. Under my power’s hard push, they underwent mitosis at a rate many times faster than even foetal development — I could feed them almost all the building blocks they needed from the carcass. Exponential growth rates were not to be trifled with, and it only took thirty minutes to achieve complete conversion.

Thirty minutes of me staring intently at a gradually disintigrating carcass of a monster dog.

“Okay, this is boring,” Rachel had said after the first ten. I had concurred, and she had left.

This was going to take all night, even with the exponential growth; this was only the initial stage. I took out my phone and called home.

“Danny Hebert,” my dad said.

“Hey Dad,” I said. “Listen, I’ve started a project which might take some time, and might let me resurrect the dead. I’m not coming home tonight. I’m perfectly safe.”

He was silent for a while. “Sure, I can’t say I know anything about what you’re out doing.” He was sullen — it was understandable. This was more important, though.

“Dad,” I said. “I promise I’ll spend some family time soon; for now we’re kinda rushing to save a woman who’s going to unjustly end up in the birdcage if we don’t save her.”

“A prison break?” He sounded skeptical.

“It’s good PR — trust me, if you knew the details you’d be up in arms.”


	126. 9♡

From my initial pile of stem cells, I began extruding pseudopods to the other carcasses, while I started making orders to make up for the ‘dietary deficiencies’ of Bitch’s dogmeat. The pseudopods were little more than gelatinous masses of stem cells and nutrients which I could move directly with my power. As such they were quite fast, moving at a little slower than walking pace.

With enough money, and the right contacts, it was relatively easy to place an order for ten drums of cooking oil, one hundred pounds of salt, and a pallet of sugar — just over a ton — and have it all delivered within the hour. I paid about two and a half times more than regular price for the unusual delivery time, the lack of forewarning, and unusual delivery location.

When I had finished slurping up the last dog carcass, my delivery arrived, and I had to leave it all alone to transport the fifty-five gallon drums and canvas bags into easy reach. Adding it all to my fleshy gelatin nightmare made the whole thing come out at over thirty tons.

Such an enormous amount of flesh was generating a lot of heat, and waste-buildup was beginning to become a problem.

Shredding a percent of the cells for raw materials in addition to the collagen I used to keep the gelatin gelatinous, and allocating a good four percent of the calcium to structural supports, I constructed a rudimentary circulatory system, and a gravitational-based flow system for the water, and several kidney-like baskets of counterflow exchanges between the two. The water would provide relief for heat as well as an avenue to shed waste. The ‘blood’ would take oxygen from frills on top of the jelly mound — essentially an exposed lung. There was no heart; I moved the blood with my power.

All of this was also labor-saving: the less I needed to use my power to do basic maintenance, the more time I could dedicate to what I came here to do.

Then I set to work shaping it all into something useful. I collected a mass of cells to a denser clump and began altering their metabolism and rewriting their DNA. Calcium and collagen was abundant in the gel, and coalesced seamlessly into bone and connective tissue. Soon it became useful to a build womb-like pocket of amniotic fluid and connect the newly formed circulatory system to an exchanger, much like a placenta.

The hardest part was re-creating the brain. Not only was near perfect recreation of the neuron topology necessary, but the numerous forms of persistent data storage in everything from DNA alterations to enzyme processes needed to be replicated to slim tolerances. Sure, the end result wouldn’t break down and fail from deviation in either; but there would be personality changes.

When I was about a half hour from my projected completion I took out my phone with one gel stained hand and texted Rachel:

> 
>         Come by again. Urgent but no danger or trouble. I have a surprise for you.
>       

* * *

My phone buzzed with Rachel’s request to be let in.

I opened the pocket and lifted a small, wet, and more-or-less dead terrier out of the amniotic fluid. I held her by the hind legs to let her lungs drain, then I put her on the floor and with one jolt from my power incited wakeful brain activity, metabolism, respiration and cardiac rhythm.

Angelica sputtered and jerked, understandably confused at her situation. She got up and oriented herself in her strange new surroundings, before looking up at me.

“Angelica, follow,” I said, and headed for the foyer.

The entrance was keyed to controls in the security center of the small base, and I let Rachel in with the push of a button. She had Bullet with her, I saw on the camera feed — small enough to carry down the stairs.

Angelica got antsy as soon as she heard Rachel coming down the stairs and looked up at me. “Stay,” I muttered, and she obeyed.

Rachel descended the last few steps, putting bullet down and saw me — then Angelica. She whistled, and the small dog shot off to her.

She looked up at me, smiling wider than I’d ever seen, and wiped her eye with one hand, scratching Angelica with the other, thoroughly distracting her from getting acquainted with Bullet.

“You fixed her eye!” Rachel exclaimed.

I smiled back. “I’m nice like that.”

She looked down at Angelica again. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Now go take care of your dog,” I said. “I’ve got work to do.”

* * *

My next creation was significantly larger, and a full-scale test of my abilities: Angelica was smaller, and less complex; therefore quicker to build. A human was a lot more involved.

And this would be no ordinary human either.

One of my chief problems was that I was only one girl — one super-powered, super-intelligent girl that didn’t need any sleep, but still only one girl. Theoretically, I could be two girls. Fenja and Menja of Empire Eighty Eight proved that two people could have the same power — and strongly suggested that similarity of body had something to do with it.

Given that I could re-created my own biology down to the corona pollentia, it should be possible for me to make a clone that shared my power. So that is exactly what I set about doing, In much the same steps as I had used to create Angelica, save for the fact that I didn’t need to turn human cells into dog cells — I didn’t even need to rewrite the DNA. It was mine to begin with.

I needed a lot more material to build a copy of myself, owing to all the augmentations I had made to my tissue densities and metabolism. I set up custom metabolic pathways in the nearby gel to provide what wasn’t at hand.

Of course, since it was me I was making, I started with the brain. If it worked, my clone would be able to direct the creation of her own body from within.

At two AM everything was in place, ready to be awakened from comatose slumber. My power saw fit to provide me with a modality for ‘activating’ them for some reason. I had feared they would remain regular neurological tissue without whatever spark caused powers to manifest.

Then, seeing as ‘I’ was essentially complete, I started neuron activity and my consciousness split sideways.

That was not the intended result, and I jerked my hand back from the gel, hoping to sever the link — only to have it remain.

I was experiencing both being in a body, and being submerged in the gel womb’s sensory deprivation. Closer examination revealed that my corona pollentia and gemma were responsible for maintaining the link; and that essentially it was a post-facto reconstruction of mental narrative.

It was practically perfect, too. Seamless.

From within my dark resting place, I began directing the construction of a new body, while I looked on from the outside.


	127. 10♡

The split opened a new realm of possibilities.

Putting one hand on the gel, I added my powers up, speeding the construction process up by half. Weaving all the advanced tissues from scratch was a different challenge than modifying existing ones. The increased oxygen requirements from the gel containing a live human brain also forced me to create deep creases in the frilly surface to give greater ‘lung’ area.

I recreated the amniotic environment and umbilical, created the circulatory system and hot-swapped the brain’s supply from direct gel-circulation to internal circulation with real blood. Skeleton and flesh took form, internal organs manifested in place. With my powers combined, it only took around as much time as making Angelica had.

At five in the morning, I pulled a nude, hairless Taylor out of the gel, and coughed my lungs clean of fluid.

It was pretty bizarre to stand in front of myself; but I had no need to socially interact with the nude, bald and wet — dressed and slightly grimy — girl in front of me. Instead, I immediately re-interfaced with the gel and went out to run errands.

I would also need to grow me some hair for my new body. I could have grown it in utero like I had with Angelica, but I wanted to get my second body up-and-going that much quicker. In fact there were still several outstanding issues with it — tissues that needed to mature and harden and metabolic stores that needed to be built up.

Clothes, towels, toiletries, and food were a priority. Both for myself and for the next person on my to-do list: Noelle.

Already her body was beginning to take form in the gel.

Were it not for my stellar self-control, I might have walked down the street with a silly smile on my face. The split was enticing to the point of being intoxicating — I almost considered making a third brain before making Noelle.

But no, all things in due time. The rescue operation had priority, which meant I needed the Travelers unconditionally loyal to me as soon as possible.

I brought simple outfits in sizes that fit myself and Noelle, and some takeout and bottled water. Meanwhile, Noelle’s body took form deep underground in a vat of amniotic fluid contained in organic gelatin.

* * *

As I worked on Noelle, I also began creating formal interaction-modes for my inter-clone communication. To my experiences and personal narrative these would matter as little as the particulars of networking protocols mattered to most internet users, but they were good to get right. The one my power supplied was seamless, but lacked rigor. Fortunately, my power yielded easily to the suggestion.

Noelle’s corona pollentia and gemma I couldn’t just create and activate. Her original power had turned her into a monster. Instead I re-created Coil’s, and my power picked up on the suggestion when I asked it to ‘connect.’ My plan B had been to re-encode the DNA of the entire brain structure to the profile of Thomas Calvert, and then change it back after it had connected.

Fortunately it hadn’t come to that. With the two of me working in tandem, Noelle was born.

Noelle was a sharp tactical mind, addled by a poor home, then anorexia, then addiction, then a horrific superpower. She was kind and firm and funny and she loved Francis Krouse. I knew her as well as I knew anybody I had touched.

I drained the fluid from her lungs and breathed life into her with my power. She drew a deep breath and coughed hard before scrambling for purchase and looking about herself bewildered.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s OK, you’re safe.”

“What the fuck is going on!” she yelled. Her last memory was of me killing her in Coil’s lair, and I hadn’t supplied any gentle waking or even a period of sleep to ease the transition.

“I killed you,” I said. “Then I brought you back. It’s currently seven in the morning on Monday, you’ve been dead for a few days. Your friends are fine. You’re in an underground secret base.”

I reached a hand out to help her to her feet. She drew back.

“Your power has been removed and replaced with a different one,” I said. “You no longer absorb nor clone, or anything like that.”

She got to her feet under her own power — quite literally as nude as the day she was born. She was about as thin as I had been, and hairless like my clone had been. Her eyes darted around, from me in front of her, to me next to the jelly mound already working on the next me, then to the jelly mound itself which took up most of the room.

“I’m Para Bellum in costume, Taylor Hebert to my friends.”

* * *

I directed Noelle to the showers where I had laid out soaps, clothes, towels, tooth brushes and paste. She followed, still bewildered, but didn’t ask any questions. She took a long while under the water to collect her thoughts and finally emerged dressed in the clothes I had supplied her with. I’d picked the outfit based on her preferences and what was available in the late-night supermarket I had shopped in.

She came out in a light sweater, jeans and sneakers, holding the toiletries she had used wrapped in the towel. When dressed and dry, she was rather mousy for a girl who had been a horrific monster not one week prior.

“Just leave those,” I said and handed her a sandwich. “You’re starving.”

She nodded and unceremoniously dropped the towel and took the offered food from me, careful not to touch my hand.

Leaving my clone in the bunker, I walked Noelle out. “I’ll take you to your friends now,” I said.

She just nodded, biting into her sandwich with abandon.

“How do you feel?”

“Good,” she managed with her mouth full.

On the precipice of the steep stairs, I held out a hand. “Take my hand.”

She hesitated.

“You’re not leaving this place before you’ve proven to yourself that you aren’t a monster anymore,” I said.

She reached out and took my hand. From the snapshot I had of her from before, I knew there had been a difficult-to-describe sensation on her skin which was now gone. The physical contact would serve as the final nail in the coffin.

“Good,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Take your time.”


	128. J♡

We took the bus across town. Noelle stared out the window and bounced her legs incessantly.

I had spent the time we had been holding hands monitoring her vitals and brain activity, as well as pushing Coil’s proficiency with his power into her skull — and when I was done with that, strategic and tactical expertise and basic combat skills.

“Why did you do it?” she asked in a hushed voice and looked at me. “Bring me back?”

“Two reasons: to secure the unconditional loyalty of the Travelers, and because I abhor it when people get dealt a shitty hand by the universe.”

She snorted. “So you’re some sort of good Samaritan? Yeah, right.”

“Jess should be up and walking right about now,” I said. “Four villains are in custody, and four more dead by my hand. A little girl was reunited with her parents, the Protectorate has gained three powerful capes, and the city is free of a powerful and vicious gang — all by my hand.

“The only real premeditated felony committed unprovoked against civilians was a bank robbery where nobody was hurt. I was acting under orders then. The guy who ordered us is dead now.”

I looked at her and added: “You’re indirectly responsible for something north of sixty deaths.”

She looked out the window again.

“This is an investment, on my part,” I continued. “Sometimes investments don’t pan out. If you and the Travelers decide to skip town, that’s just the risk I take by investing.

“However, seeing as I have fixed one of your outstanding and intractable problems, it might be wise to hang around and see if I can’t fix the matter of getting you back to Earth Aleph, no?”

* * *

The Travelers were at a different motel from last time — a nicer one, now. Lisa had gotten them in contact with some forgers to get fake identities put in place.

“One last thing,” I said, stopping a dozen yards from the room her friends were staying in.

Noelle stopped and looked at me.

I threw a slow punch at her, and saw the learned reflex activate. She parried and threw a counter punch with the grace of a black-belt kick-boxer. I parried and disengaged.

Noelle looked at her hands, bewildered.

“Upgrades,” I said. “I taught you some basic self-defence. Put it to good use.” Then I turned and walked away. “I’ll be in touch.”

Behind me, I heard Noelle run the rest of the way to the door, then Marissa say: “Noelle?! The fuck?! Oh my god!”

* * *

I called Dad’s office from my cell, knowing he would be just coming in. “Hey Dad.”

“Taylor— you weren’t home this morning. Is everything all-right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “More than all-right. I brought a girl and a dog back from the dead.”

“That sounds tremendous,” he said. “Any chance I’ll get to see you tonight?”

It would do me a lot of good to do that. “Yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”

* * *

It was mid-morning when I arrived at Brian’s place. My third brain was done, too.

“Taylor? You didn’t say you’d be coming by?” he said.

I entered and he closed the door behind me. “We need to talk — way too many things have been happening over the weekend, and you’ve been out of the loop.”

He pointed me to the kitchen. “Coffee?”

I nodded. “Angelica and Noelle Meinhardt are no longer dead.”

It took him a moment to process what I had said. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Bitch was happy. As are the Travelers. Are you up-to-date on the next job?”

He was quiet for a little, still considering the implications of me being able to bring back the dead. “I heard from Lisa we’re hitting a prisoner transport?”

I nodded. “I’m recruiting some more capes later — Coil’s blackguards. I’d like you to tag along.”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

That left the interpersonal elephant in the room. I took a deep breath. “There’s no delicate way to say this,” I said. “I went out with Lisa Saturday. We did ecstasy, danced all night, and… We had sex yesterday afternoon.”

He stopped with the milk jug in one hand. “Uh… Weren’t we supposed to talk about this, Taylor?”

“Yeah, and I’m sorry,” I said, slumping in my seat. “I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to hang what with having to take over Coil’s empire and securing us an expansion for the team and…”

“Hey,” he said and began steaming the milk. “It’s— I’m angry, but it’s understandable you didn’t have time. I’d also have accepted you going on a date with Lisa. But you had sex with her. I’m not angry you did that, I’m just miffed you broke our deal.”

I looked away. It had been a bad move, done in Taylor-mode, and now I was facing the music. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He poured the milk into the espresso and set the cup in front of me before taking a seat. “It’s not a deal-breaker on our relationship,” he said. “Just don’t do it again.”

I nodded and took a sip of my latte. “The having-sex part or the breaking deals part?”

He shot me a brief glare, then smirked. “So, who’s the better lay?”

I almost choked on my coffee. With deliberate precision I swallowed and put down the cup. With a mischievous grin I looked him in the eye. “I don’t know, Lisa was pretty good. We have about twenty minutes — maybe you want to have another go?”


	129. Q♡

In the bunker I pulled another me out of the gelatin. It was quite a lovely to have it in the back of my mind that I was having a good time with my boyfriend.

The new me got cleaned and dressed and took over construction work relieving one to find transportation for Brian and myself — my next project wasn’t another body, but a power multiplier for my most neglected team mate. Another thing I didn’t have to worry about.

> 
>         alec, meet me at the intersection of panama and fallow in four hours.
>       

It was similarly liberating to know in the back of my mind that administrative duties and personal relations were being taken care of, leaving me to focus on constructing. Alec’s power was enormously unethical — leaving his victims in a locked-in state, completely unable to communicate with the outside world.

This would be a problem for almost any conceivable target of control, except someone who was effectively brain-dead. Which was exactly what I was planning to make. Two big hunky super soldiers with severely reduced brains — everything not related to motor skills and senses; that is to say, emotions, memory, personality, sense of self, volition, and so on — simply wasn’t present. They could breathe and maybe swallow fluids and chew food unaided.

And then they were just shy of seven feet tall, built like athletes, and chock full of the toughest tissues, densest muscles, and strongest bones I could make. Outwards, they were sickly pale, full of angry red knotty scars, and melanin patterns that spelled ‘100% brainless puppet’ on them.

It was far easier than making new clones of myself, but still by no means a quick process.

Exiting the bunker with my second self, I called Lisa. She picked up immediately.

“What’s the status on the Canary transfer?” I said.

“There’s been a complication; she’s shipping out together with Lung. Looks like it’ll go down tomorrow.”

That was unfortunate. “So, disrupting the transfer we can either choose to let Lung go or kill him.”

“Yes, or we could get clever, somehow,” she said.

I mentally reviewed the laundry list of reasons why Lung was scum. “Ice the fucker. If you let me get my hands on him, I can give his power to someone worthy.”

Lisa didn’t say anything for a beat. “Taylor, what have you done?” she asked.

“Revived Angelica and Noelle — but with Coil’s power,” I said, smiling inwardly. “Also I cloned myself twice.”

She was quiet for a good while longer, then she sighed and began giggling. “Oh man, we are either screwed to all hell or we’re going to take over the world.”

“I incurred the risk willingly,” I said. The PRT had pretty strict regulations about biological capes and anything self-replicating. Cloning myself basically secured that I’d be considered an A-Class threat. “It’s basically a necessity.”

“Yeah,” she said. “So, I’m assuming you’re still at it with the necromancy?”

“Making soldiers for Alec, yeah. And I’m going to go on some social calls with Brian — Barker, Biter, Circus. Trainwreck is still in league with the Archer’s Bridge Merchants, right?”

It spoke to Coil’s ties to law enforcement that he had undercover cape operatives in other gangs. Barker and Biter were a mercenary duo, and Circus was some sort of small-time lone wolf cat burglar. In either case, useful to have at hand.

“After the mission at hand, I say we extract Trainwreck and destroy the Merchants,” I mused. “That a bunch of dastard teenage blackguards did what the Empire couldn’t is good PR.”

“Sure is, anyway, I gotta run,” she said. “Have fun with Brian.”

“Oh, I am,” I said.

I was having a lot of fun. The feelings and sensations trickling back to my two other selves were very pleasant.

* * *

Brian and I headed out in a black sedan with toned windows, secure in the knowledge that construction and administration was proceeding nicely. The driver was paid handsomely for his silence — in addition to the fact that double-crossing super villains was incredibly stupid.

Brian’s costume fit in a large duffel bag; mine was had been relocated discretely when the apartment block was raided, and I had gone to fetch it while Brian and I fooled around. Now, we had a car ride in front of us, and I needed Brian up to speed on a lot of things.

“The way I see it,” I began, “there’s a few different categories villains fall into.”

Brian looked at me. “What’s this, philosophy hour?”

“You’re my trusted lieutenant, I’m telling you what direction we’re moving the company.”

“Ah, do continue ‘boss,’” he said with a smirk.

I glared at him. “There’s people like me, who take one look at the Wards, and the Protectorate and decided — for good or bad reasons — ‘never in a million years.’ For me, partially Shadow Stalker, partially power-induced insanity, partially peer pressure. I’m over that now, but done is done and I am irrevocably a villain now.”

Brian nodded.

“Then there’s people like you, who happen to commit a felony out of desperation.”

“I never told you that — did Tats—”

“Lucky guess,” I said. “You’re too much of a straight shooter. I’d have thought you’d end up in the Wards, really. But the reason one commits a felony out of desperation is lack of heroic ethics. I don’t think you’ll deny it if I say you don’t really care about anyone other than family and friends, and that if you happen to hurt someone in the process of protecting the ones you love, you lose no sleep.”

“True,” he said.

“Bitch falls into this category too. That’s why you two get along. She sees you look out for your family and team and not give a shit about who gets hurt in the process — just as she is with her dogs. She recognizes the loyalty and respects it. Tattletale has similar circumstances: runaway needing to get by, only one tool at hand, turns to crime.”

“So, this is psychoanalysis hour, then,” he said and smiled.

I waved a hand at him. “I’m passing the time. Would you rather brood in silence? Or make out? Regent is a different category — he’s been terminally fucked up from the onset, and villainy is more or less his only option. If his upbringing had been anything else, he might have been your category. This is why our crew works. We’re brought into villainy by factors outside our control.”


	130. K♡

Brian thought about that for a few seconds. “It makes good sense; Coil was good.”

“Hence why getting rid of him was hard. Tats chose me well, too. Knew I’d be pliable.”

“Has she told you?”

I shook my head. “A deduction. Anyway, you’re probably wondering about the other categories. There’s the ‘unapologetically evil’ one, and the ‘impose own system on the world’ one, and the ‘jungle law’ one. Examples include Jack Slash, the Empire, and Lung, respectively.”

He nodded.

“But I’m thinking we should change course. We all have fairly noble goals: you wanting to take care of your family, Regent wanting to kill his, Bitch wanting to take care of dogs, Tattletale wanting to expose the dirty secrets of Washington…”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

I shrugged. “And I want something, something humanity’s continued survival, end world hunger, destroy the Endbringers, end school bullying, and so on. We’re essentially the people forced into villainy by the status quo, so I say we start fighting it. At least in the eyes of the public.”

“Hm.”

“Hence the current job, breaking Canary out. She’s by all accounts been subject to a grossly unfair trial, and I won’t stand for the circus that has become the public’s willingness to let the bill of rights fall by the wayside because a woman accidentally hurts her stalker. If she had pushed him down the stairs, nobody would be sentenced to murder prison.”

“So, you’re some kind of dark knight, dealing justice where the Heroes cannot?”

I nodded. “I’ve already directed three villains onto the side of heroism — one to save her from herself, the others because they could be so much more. I’m thinking they’ll come out with a press release any day now. And I’ve offed three Nazis and a blackmail-happy villainous PRT plant.”

The driver pulled up to the curb, and we stepped out. It was a bad part of the docks, but it was fairly deserted. Up above, I was keeping lookout. I led Brian to an abandoned apartment in a derelict housing project — empty dirty hallways, and the sound of a crying child in the distance.

We came in, and my other self across the room turned around to face us.

Brian stopped in the doorway and looked from me to her, while I headed for the duffle bag on the bare floor which contained my costume and a few choice weapons.

“Are you going to explain to me what’s going on?” he asked after a little while.

“Cloning,” I said.

“I’m a hive mind,” I added. “Three, going on four sometime soon.” The only difference between the two of me was hair length.

“This is— isn’t the PRT pretty harsh on bio-manipulating capes cloning stuff?” he asked.

“Class-A threat rating instantly, kill-order drafted and ready,” I said, and began helping myself with undressing and gearing up. Working with multiple bodies was not something I had tried before now, but it proceeded as seamlessly as I had hoped. An extra pair of hands that knew exactly what straps to tighten and what holsters to fill.

“I can see why knights had squires,” I said. “Need any help?”

Brian had barely gotten into his black fatigues. He hesitated a little, then pulled a thin balaclava over his head. “I’m good, thanks.”

It had taken me less than two minutes to suit up in fatigues and ballistics gear. It was good to have striped arms again. I’d chosen just a pistol for firearms, and only one flashbang and smoke grenade, but several mêlée options.

I giggled. His arousal was evident. I had used my power to rejuvenate him after our little tryst — perhaps too much. “You couldn’t handle two of me,” I said in a teasing tone. “And one of me is needed elsewhere.” With that, plainclothes left.

* * *

The next administrative duty to oversee was acquisition of new costumes for the rest of my legion, and locating several animals and plants. With my bio-synthetic capabilities, it seemed insane not to explore the industrial applications of several bio-polymers and fibers — notably spider silk.

But I wasn’t going to get any old spider silk. I was going to track down several healthy spiders of different species to copy from, including the strongest silk in North America, the Black Widow, and the strongest in the world, the Darwin’s Bark spider. That meant a trip down the rabbit hole of black market animal trading.

There was also the matter of just stealing improved sensory organs from various animals. It would be a world of useful applications with an electrical sense; and while I could stick magnets in my fingertips as easily as I had put piercings in my face, it would be better to have dedicated sensory organs for that. That meant somehow finding a shark or two to touch.

I kept thinking of ideas while Brian and I moved out in a different car.

* * *

The duo of Barker and Biter was almost comically well-matched. Biter was a large shirtless white guy, bigger than Brian, while Barker was small and black. Both had a theme of teeth about them — barker in tattoos around his mouth and Biter from his mask’s jaw-segment which looked like an actuated bear trap. Both of them had woefully inadequate costumes.

We met them in an parking lot where I was certain several drug-deals had taken place.

“So, big bad Grue is the one who’s taken over?” Barker said.

Grue’s voice was modulated by his darkness pulsing around him, as it usually did. “Weight your words carefully, Barker,” he said.

Biter put a hand — wearing spiked knuckle dusters — on Barker’s shoulder. I had read Coil’s file on them. Biter was the gentle giant, Barker was the wild card.

“I’m afraid the nefarious mastermind fell to a more nefarious and deadly mastermind,” I said. “I’m Para Bellum, the boss of Tattletale, who has been signing your checks for the last few days.”

“What can we do for you?” Biter said.

“I offer long term employment and a major job tomorrow, and several benefits which Coil could never provide.” It was obvious from the way Biter was standing that he had chronic pain. “Among others, parahuman healing of any and all injuries, past, present or future.”

“From who?”

“Me. Of a quality comparable with New Wave’s Panacea.”


	131. A♣

Biter was worse off than I had imagined — widespread tensile damage to tissues around his midsection. At the first touch of relief he almost sagged. “You will also be given better costumes, free of charge,” I added. “Ballistics protection is mandatory on my payroll.”

Barker nodded. “Free stuff is always good.”

* * *

On the way to meet Circus, I taught Brian the secret-speak trick I had developed with Lisa.

Circus was a lone wolf, as was evident from the location she had chosen: a rooftop. Her powers included a mastery of acrobatics and enhanced reflexes, and I projected she was fairly confident she could loose us by jumping rooftops, and if nothing else, her extra-spatial storage area probably held a number of nasty weapons.

We shook hands, she wore fingerless gloves, I had trigger finger gloves. As soon as I had a read, I began constructing a mental model — it was obvious from Coil’s file that there was more to Circus than met the eye.

“I’d like to hire you permanently and put you on a team,” I said.

“I work alone,” she replied, exactly as I had foreseen.

“I understand that,” I said. “Things change.” In the back of my mind I delved into her motivational structures and affect associations. “You’re worried any team mates may not accept you for who you are.”

She stiffened a little at that.

Circus was, in addition to all her other powers, a very limited shape shifter. She had two forms; masculine and feminine, and her gender-identity had long since settled outside the traditional binary.

“I am a shapeshifter as well,” I said. “Queer too. As for your powers forcing you to rely on brutality and image, you’ll find peers in our group on that front as well.”

She was quiet for a beat. “I’ll think on it.”

“Think fast,” I replied. “We have a job to do tomorrow.”

“What kind?”

I shrugged. “Can’t give any details before you’re in.”

“OK, consider me tentatively involved. What’s the job.”

“We’re busting Canary’s birdcage transport.”

Circus’ eyes went wide. “The singer?”

She was a fan, apparently.

* * *

I picked up Alec at the intersection I had specified, and took him to the lair. A load of exotic animals would soon be delivered, so I was in a hurry.

“Meet me inside,” I said to him and sent him down the stairs before closing the door behind him.

“Wha—” was the last I heard. Less than a minute later I heard him calling out inside the bunker.

“In here!” I called. Footsteps followed, and he appeared in the door to the gel room, where I was guiding one of the two puppets through the motions of getting dressed.

“What the fuck,” Alec said.

“Me hive mind clone-maker, you human puppet Master, these two, puppets. Introductions thus made, you need to control and walk them out of here. They’re mostly brainless vegetables — no volition, no personality, nothing that makes a person a person. Ethical targets for your power.”

Alec scratched his hair and looked troubled. “Look, I’m kinda lying low — I’m sure you remember. If I walk around with controlled bodyguards, even ones as ugly as these, I’m basically blowing the whistle on the fact that I’m a Master.”

“Ever since I made that —” I gestured to the gel mound “— and made more of me, I’m an A-Class threat. That means half the Protectorate is going to come down on my head if it looks like I’m attempting a hostile takeover. You have bigger problems.”

He thought on that for a little. “All-right, fair enough… You know, I’ve actually been itching to get some action on that front.”

“And don’t make me remind you that I’ll take away your toys if you do grossly unethical things with them, just the same as you’re not allowed to take thralls without my explicit consent.”

“Yes, boss,” he said, and the two puppets splayed on the floor began twitching a little.

* * *

My power worked on plants as well as animals — on any living thing really. Which meant I didn’t need to research the metabolic pathways to synthesize vitamins and essential amino acids; but that was just an added bonus. The spider silk was the real catch.

I had basically everyone’s measurements, which meant I could make basically everyone stab-proof and bullet resistant compression underwear out of woven spider silk; if the cloth samples I had extruded were any indication.

My ‘loom’ was an array of thousands of spinnerets, more or less directly copied from Darwin’s Bark spiders; but in the gelatinous medium, they could move under their own power, to perform the weaving motion.

Weaving garments in one piece was a little trickier, but it took a fraction of the time to produce clothes compared to producing bodies. By evening, as I headed both home and to the headquarters, I began the last piece of construction.

A decoy. Another clone, but one that didn’t look like me. One that looked like Canary. With luck, I’d be mistaken for her, sent inside the birdcage, and be able to touch a few dozen powerful villains.

* * *

I came home, with nothing else to do than homely things, for the first time in a long while. Across town I was managing the only production of woven spider silk in the world, testing chitin and spider silk laminate armor and making another clone; while with Brian, I was planning a major Villain meet-and-greet. Orders for costume parts for myself were on the move from our excellent requisitions officer — technically an illegal arms dealer.

There was nothing else left to do for one third of myself, so I began cleaning house and planning dinner.


	132. 2♣

Summons went out late at night for the briefing. Tattletale had worked out the details of the PRT’s transfer plans, and I had worked out a plan.

Dad and I had talked and watched a movie. I’d told him the details about Canary, and in vague terms about our rescue plan. Dad had told me about the fight he was having to eliminate Empire influence from the union. I nudged ‘eliminating the Empire’ up a step or two on my priority list.

Meanwhile, I had researched like a madwoman. As soon as I had my Canary decoy out of the gel, I had doubled the research effort. Past responses to prison transport breaks, dossiers Tattletale had fetched about protocols and materiel used in the transfer, Dragon’s latest creations. On the side I had begun production of silk-wear for everyone I had touched.

Meanwhile I prepared to go meet the leaders of my teams with Brian.

The location I had chosen was a property we owned. A dockside warehouse with nothing in it. No more did we need to worry about incurring trespassing charges when meeting in secret.

We didn’t wait long before Faultline and Gregor arrived. I had asked each leader to come and bring one escort.

“Faultline,” I greeted.

“Para Bellum,” she said.

We waited together in silence, and a minute later the car I had sent for the Travelers arrived.

Noelle and Ballistic came in. Ballistic in his usual red-black costume with blocky pockets and armor panels, Noelle in a balaclava, a leather jacket, and black trousers.

“Travelers, well met,” I said, then addressed to Noelle: “What name have you chosen?”

She nodded. “I’m She-viper. Thinker. No costume yet.”

“Understandable. Last I heard, Ballistic was the leader of the Travelers,” I continued. “Has that changed?”

“Yes.”

I nodded in acknowledgement.

Circus arrived alone, of course. Her costume was different — the core theme of a jester was still present but the overall style and color scheme was new. From white and red to green and yellow, less bells, more frills, and a different hat.

That just left Barker and Biter. They arrived two minutes later.

“You’re tardy,” I called out to them as they entered the warehouse.

“Lunkhead here took too long playing with his vest,” Barker said, jabbing a thumb at Biter. Biter was wearing a ballistics vest — and I hoped a tank top underneath. Otherwise his costume was unchanged. Barker had a bandanna over his head with two holes cut for the eyes, leaving his mouth free.

“I apologize,” Biter said.

“Apology accepted. Everyone is present.”

Grue started handing out folders, one to each of the other teams. “As you may know, the singer Canary was convicted of aggravated assault and attempted murder with a parahuman ability; which anyone reasonable would say merits imprisonment of up to five years in maximum security. Because of public pressure, a biased judge and a criminally incompetent defence, she got sentenced to life in the birdcage.

“I won’t stand for that, so we’re breaking her out. Eighteen capes will be cooperating under my command to make this happen, which is enormous overkill, but we’re sending a message and hopefully getting a new team member in the process. The transfer happens tomorrow afternoon, and she is shipped together with Lung, who we are also going to kill. Compensation for all parties involved is three hundred thousand dollars per capita. This is of course negotiable, but negotiate quickly.

“Faultline, if possible, I would like to shake hands with Gregor, Spitfire, and yourself to better my understanding of your capabilities. My offer stands to become permanent employees of my organization and receive the benefits I can provide.

“Circus, you’re looking at the same offer.”

There was quiet and the sound of pages turning.

“I’m assuming you have a plan?” Faultline asked.

“I do,” I said. “We block the road, disable the vehicle, kill Lung, rescue Canary, and make our escape. If Dragon responds with an aerial vehicle, Sundancer, Ballistic, and myself will provide anti-air fire. Any questions?”

“How the fuck do you think you’re going to kill Lung?” Barker asked.

“You know how I healed Biter?”

He nodded.

“I’m going to do the opposite of that; but allow me to demonstrate.”

For the purpose of just this, I had brought a live rat in a cage — rendered comatose. Grue held out the cage for me to take, and I held the rat out by the tail for all to see. Snapping my fingers for emphasis, I liquefied its innards in an eye blink and the resulting mix of flud began draining from its mouth.

“I’m going to liquefy his brain before he has a chance to do anything fancy. All I need is one touch.”

“Ew,” Circus said. “Rat soup.”

I snorted and made to lob the rat her way, she nimbly dodged backwards. “Gross! Don’t throw it at me!”

“Sorry,” I said. “Couldn’t resist. But yes, Circus’ assessment is quite apt; my powers are disgusting at times.”

“Professionalism concerns aside,” Faultline said, “is there a reason why you have decided to hire eighteen parahumans for the job? There are specialists who pull similar operations with teams of two or three.”

“Show of force,” I said. “I’m the new queen in town.”


	133. 3♣

The meeting broke; Barker and Biter left to go their own way, as did Circus. She-Viper and Ballistic went back to the car they had come in.

“Para Bellum, a word,” Faultline said.

I read her body language and detected no ill intent.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“I’m going to call in the rest of my team,” she said.

She had her entire team waiting nearby — as I predicted she would have. I nodded.

“You said you’d like to ‘shake out hands’ to gain information about our abilities, what exactly does that entail, if I may ask?”

“I gain a complete mental image of your physiological capabilities, skill sets, and powers,” I said. “Also, I can revive you from the dead at a later point — although only to the mental state you had when I last touched you.”

“Interesting,” Gregor said, and held out a hand. I took it and got an image of a more bizarre biology than Newter’s by far — tailored towards chemical synthesis.

Faultline took stock of me and Gregor’s handshake for a beat, then pulled off her own glove. “Gregor, go get the others.”

* * *

Midnight rolled around, and I met up with my arms dealer in person for the first time, in a garage we just happened to own.

She was a mousy-looking woman in a pant suit. Ex-military judging by her stance and musculature.

“You are without a doubt my most interesting customer to date,” she said, leading me to the wooden crates containing the goods I had ordered.

“Was there a problem in procuring my order?” I asked.

She snorted disdainfully. “I said it was interesting, not difficult. I had to pull on a lot of connections; hence the high price.”

I had paid something like six times the regular price for military grade hardware, because of the deadline.

“M2 Browning, tripod, one thousand AP rounds, two hundred pounds of Semtex, detonators, radios, assorted personal hardware similar to your previous orders… If I may, miss, are you planning to start a war?”

I snickered. “No… Well, maybe some day.”

Meanwhile, across town, I arrived at the Palanquin with a care package — two of me were playing bike couriers to deliver all the undersuits. The Palanquin was closed on Mondays, which meant there was no line to bypass. The door intercom’s operator let me in with a ‘delivery for Faultline, from Para Bellum.’

Faultline greeted me in her office.

“Delivery,” I said and placed the canvas bag containing the silk-wear on her table. “Bespoke spider silk compression underwear, two sets for each of your people and yourself. Stab proof, bullet proof for small calibers. Cold hand wash only, drip dry.”

She looked from me to the bag. “That is very generous.”

“You are valuable allies.”

She pulled out the first set, in a plastic bag labeled ‘Faultline,’ opened it and felt the fabric.

“I take commission if you want something more elaborate,” I said. “Call up She-Viper if you want a second opinion on the quality of my work.”

Faultline held out a hand, I took it, and we shook.

“You are by all accounts an excellent employer. I hope you understand that I am still waiting for the other foot to drop,” she said.

“Your paranoia is flattering, in a way,” I replied. “Speaks of your high opinion of my ability to lay schemes.”

* * *

The Travelers were staying at yet another motel.

Running a criminal organization involved rather a lot of strange systems of communications — everyone used burner phones, so phone directories were quickly rendered obsolete, necessitating throwaway email accounts and state-of-the-art cryptography.

As for finding one another, it was a matter of making your place of temporary residence a matter of a system. For instance, a list of motels, a set plan for relocating between them, and a certain fake name that reservations were made under.

This led me to the room number, without having to call Lisa. It was only with the advent of my multitasking that I was able to begin getting a leg up on her, and begin to act like a criminal mastermind. I was still going to be playing second fiddle for a week or two. Lisa could simply beat me by using her power.

Noelle greeted me. “Taylor, come in.”

The room was a three-bed ordeal with gaudy interior that hadn’t been updated since the nineties. Marissa and Jess had both gotten up — Jess supported by forearm crutches.

“Taylor!” Jess exclaimed. “What can we do for you?”

I handed the canvas bag to Noelle. “Costume for you, undersuits for everyone.”

Noelle took the bag from me and pulled the black full body suit out, holding it up. “This is some really nice fabric, what is it?”

“Spider silk. Stab proof, probably bullet proof. I’d still recommend a ballistics vest and helmet if you’re thinking of walking into a firefight. The undersuits are the same, but thinner, and therefore less bullet proof.”

“Spider silk?” Marissa asked.

I nodded and went to take a look at Jess. “Stronger than Kevlar, but quite literally as soft as silk. Not from real spiders. There’s sets for the guys too. Jess?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to give you a checkup and use my power to speed up your recovery,” I said.

She reached out and took my hand, almost immediately. “Please.”

Her recovery was coming along nicely; which was good. Her diet was sufficient, but her muscular atrophy was extensive. I went to work immediately.


End file.
